a former police chief being sentenced to death for murder and bribery last year are extremely rare q if you think we've been through most trials happen behind closed doors and chinese authorities maintain almost total secrecy over the number of people sentenced to death amnesty international estimates that the number of death penalties in china is in the thousands. that would mean that china executed more people last year than all the countries in the world put together. in contrast to the us the time a prisoner spends in jail before their execution is often only a few months. but conditions for death row prisoners are often inhumane. a shackled to the wall and tortured. amnesty international has also cited reports of prisoners being executed without being able to say goodbye to their families.