Death with reprieve (simplified Chinese: 死刑缓期执行; traditional Chinese: 死刑緩期執行; pinyin: sǐxíng huǎnqī zhíxíng, abbr: 死缓; 死緩; Sǐhuǎn) is a criminal punishment found in chapter 5 (death penalty), sections 48, 50 and 51 of the criminal law of the People's Republic of China.
It is a two-year suspended sentence where the execution is only carried out if the convicted commits further crimes during the suspension period.
[4] Based on the 2024 sentencing of Yang Hengjun to death with reprieve for espionage charges, Ryan Mitchell, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, stated that death with reprieve was used in recent years to reduce the rate of executions without abolishing capital punishment.
He also stated that such sentences were typically reserved for serious crimes with potentially serious social consequences, and that they were rarely commuted to fixed-term imprisonment.
[5] The 2015 criminal law amendment allowed sentences to restrict commutation to only life imprisonment for convictions of bribery or "plundering the public treasury".