Vietnam might let rich convicts buy their way off death row

BANGKOK, Thailand — Here’s some good news for death row inmates in Vietnam. Give back half of your ill-gotten gains and the government might not kill you.

Vietnam’s communist party is fairly unabashed about its steely treatment of those convicted of crimes. Even non-violent offenders — from heroin traffickers to corrupt bankers — have found themselves tied to a post in front of a firing squad.

But soon there might be a way out — at least for the rich. If a proposed law passes, convicts could reduce their death sentences to life imprisonment if they give back “half the money or property they gained from their offenses,” according to Vietnam’s Thanh Nien newspaper.

More from GlobalPost: Vietnam is sentencing corrupt bankers to death, by firing squad

This isn’t a done deal. So far, it’s just a proposal within Vietnam’s powerful National Assembly, which is looking at ways to “express the Vietnamese government’s humanity."

Some judges and lawyers, however are already resisting the idea. According to Transparency International, Vietnam is somewhere between Russia and Mexico on the corruption scale — which means it’s an entrenched and debilitating problem.

Some warn of a twisted scenario where hyper-corrupt officials, having robbed taxpayers, could then use that same cash to evade the ultimate penalty. As one lawyer told the outlet Tuoi Tre, it’s using “money in exchange for life … many death row inmates have a lot of cash and they will try to duck the death penalty at any cost.”

In recent years, Vietnam has seen high-profile trials in which corrupt bankers are sentenced to death. This can be interpreted as a not-so-subtle message to citizens: we know you’re fed up with corruption and this is what we’re doing about it.

But will giving them an out, one that is potentially lucrative for the government, sit well with a Vietnamese public that is already weary of seeing wealthy elites behave with impunity?