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CHINA, OFFICIALLY THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, IS A COUNTRY IN EAST ASIA. IT IS THE WORLD'S MOST POPULOUS COUNTRY, WITH A POPULATION OF MORE THAN 1.4 BILLION.
SINGAPORE: In mid-September, a 22-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment and caning for stabbing a stranger to death while they were both jogging in Punggol.
Surajsrikan Diwakar Mani Tripathi was charged with murder under Section 300(c), which is punishable either by death or life imprisonment with caning.
In the aftermath, several readers asked what made the difference - why was Surajsrikan spared the death penalty? CNA spoke to lawyers to find out what goes into deciding if an offender gets sentenced to death or to life imprisonment.
Are there different "degrees" of murder?
The death sentence used to be mandatory until January 2013, when the Penal Code (Amendment) Act 2012 (Act 32 of 2012) came into operation, said Ms A Meenakshi, an associate at IRB Law.
The amendment allowed the court to have the discretion to sentence a person to life imprisonment with caning instead of death for certain murder offences.
The first factor that determines whether an accused person receives the death penalty or life imprisonment is the selection of the charge against him or her, said Mr Johannes Hadi, partner at Eugene Thuraisingam LLP.
"The Penal Code sets out a hierarchical rubric for the categorisation of homicide offences," he explained.
