Mercy Outside the Vermillion Line1
The Chinese Emperor Exercises Mercy in Red Paint
(from Ernest Alabaster's ''Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law and Cognate Topics)
Having thus briefly dealt with the general jurisdiction of the Board, it remains to give a special note on probably its most onerous duty—the revision of capital sentences. The vast majority of death sentences are submitted by the Provincial Authorities to the Judiciary Board 
for revision. Two lists are there made out, one of criminals who should by right be executed, and the longer one of criminals whose death sentence is merely formal. The second list is at once referred to the proper officers to determine on the commutation fixed by unwritten custom, and the Provincial Authorities are informed of the revised sentences. The first list is then written on a large sheet of paper thus:
not alphabetically, or by chance, but so that the names of those prisoners who are, in the opinion of the Board, less guilty than the others are placed either at the corners or in the centre. The list is then submitted to the Emperor 
who, with a brush dipped in vermilion, makes a circle on it at seeming, and to some extent real, hazard, and the criminals whose names are traversed by the red line are ordered for execution. The others remain on the list until the next year, but, if they escape the vermilion pencil for three years, their sentences are then commuted. This revision takes place annually in the autumn, and is often called and translated 'Revision at the Autumn 'Assize.' There are some cases where the procedure above described may be dispensed with, the Code providing that the Governor of the Province may authorise the immediate carrying out of the death penalty. Rebels, pirates etc., are thus summarily treated.
Endnotes
1 Ernest Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law and Cognate Topics (London:Luzac & Co. 1899), 28-29. ⇑
