Chinese judge: Death sentencing uneven

China's top court will ensure the death penalty is applied uniformly across the nation by the end of the year, state media said Thursday.

The decision marks the latest step to reform capital punishment in the nation believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than the rest of the world combined.

At the start of 2007, the country's highest court started reviewing and ratifying all death penalty sentences meted out by provincial courts.

Zhang Jun, vice president of the Supreme People's Court, said the review has reduced the number of death sentences, and "human rights protection is constantly improving," the China Daily said.

However, uneven standards for applying the death penalty in provincial high courts has led to "judicial injustice," Zhang was quoted as telling a conference of high court presidents on Wednesday.

According to Ni Shouming, spokesman for the Supreme People's Court, unified guidelines will be released by the end of the year.

China doesn't officially release death sentence figures and international rights organizations do not know the exact number of executions carried out in the country every year.

Amnesty International says China executed at least 1,770 people in 2005 _ about 80 percent of the world's total.

The true number is thought to be many times higher. London-based Amnesty has cited a senior member of China's national legislature as saying some 10,000 people are executed each year.

While the country's top legal bodies have urged a reduction in the number of death sentences, they have said that capital punishment cannot completely be abolished.

The amendment to China's capital punishment law, enacted in November, requires the Supreme People's Court to approve all death sentences, ending a 23-year-old practice of giving the final review to provincial courts.

The change follows reports of executions of wrongly convicted people and criticism that lower courts arbitrarily impose the death sentence.