FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2007 file photo, then Chinaese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, right, and his wife Gu Kailai attend a memorial ceremony for Bo's father Bo Yibo, a late revolutionary leader considered one of communist China's founding fathers, at a military hospital in Beijing. The murder of a British businessman by Gu, the wife of the ousted Chinese politician, was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, by the government?s account, but the trial proceedings, and official statements about them, have failed to clarify glaring omissions in the case. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan, File)
FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2007 file photo, then Chinaese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, right, and his wife Gu Kailai attend a memorial ceremony for Bo's father Bo Yibo, a late revolutionary leader considered one of communist China's founding fathers, at a military hospital in Beijing. The murder of a British businessman by Gu, the wife of the ousted Chinese politician, was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, by the government?s account, but the trial proceedings, and official statements about them, have failed to clarify glaring omissions in the case. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 9, 2012 file video image taken from CCTV, Gu Kailai, center, the wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai, stands during her trial in the Hefei Intermediate People's Court in Hefei in eastern China's Anhui province. The murder of a British businessman by Gu, the wife of an ousted Chinese politician, was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, by the government?s account, but the trial proceedings, and official statements about them, have failed to clarify glaring omissions in the case. (AP Photo/CCTV via APTN, File) CHINA OUT, TV OUT
FILE - In this April 12, 2011 file photo, Neil Heywood, a British business consultant, smiles at an art gallery in Beijing. His body was found in a secluded Chongqing hotel in November, 2011. The murder of the Briton by Gu Kailai, the wife of an ousted Chinese politician, was supposed to be an open-and-shut case, by the government?s account, but the trial proceedings, and official statements about them, have failed to clarify glaring omissions in the case. (AP Photo/China.org.cn, File) CHINA OUT
BEIJING (AP) ? A fallen Chinese politician's wife who confessed to killing a British businessman is due to hear the verdict Monday in her murder trial and Communist Party leaders might have decided against a death penalty for fear it could incite public sympathy for her.
The conclusion of Gu Kailai's trial will be a step toward closing a scandal that has rocked the Chinese leadership at a sensitive time when it is preparing to hand over power to younger leaders. But even after the verdict is announced, questions will remain over the fate of her husband, Bo Xilai, a prominent figure who was dismissed in March as party secretary of the major city of Chongqing.
Gu is accused of killing Briton Neil Heywood, a former Bo family associate, after a dispute over money and state media claim Heywood threatened her son. A family aide has been charged as an accessory. State media say Gu confessed to intentional homicide, for which the penalty ranges from 10 years in prison to death. One option is a suspended death sentence that can be commuted later to a long prison term.
Chinese courts regularly impose death sentences for murder, rape and some nonviolent crimes.
Any ruling will be politically delicate, and Chinese leaders might have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear a more severe penalty might stir outrage or give Gu the image of a scapegoat for her husband's misdeeds, political and legal analysts say. The party says Bo was removed due to unspecified violations.
If Gu becomes a target of sympathy, the scandal that has embarrassed China's government will drag on.
"If you execute her, what about Bo Xilai? You should also execute Bo Xilai, because when the story becomes fully known, it's highly likely that people will think that she was just a scapegoat for the whole thing," said Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
"Then if you want to put Bo Xilai on the death penalty, that's a really, really dangerous thing."
No senior leader has been sentenced to death in recent decades, and having a party-controlled court system impose such a penalty could open the door to its use in future power struggles.
The family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, is expected to receive a lighter penalty.
Francois Godement, a China politics expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said other factors in Gu's favor are that state media say she confessed and a claim that she acted to defend her son after threats by Heywood.
Godement noted that senior leaders and their immediate relatives have been spared the death penalty since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the chaotic 1966-76 period that saw many party elders persecuted by ultraradical Red Guards.
One example is the 1998 corruption conviction of former Beijing Mayor Chen Xitong, who like Bo was a member of the party's ruling Politburo. Chen was sentenced to 16 years in prison, while lower-level figures have been put to death in other graft cases.
He Weifang, a legal scholar at Peking University, said he expected Gu's sentence to be somewhere between 15 years' jail and the death sentence with a reprieve. He cited in part Gu's status as the wife of a senior leader whose fate remains unclear even though many believe his political career to be over.
"Immediate execution is very unlikely. Not all intentional homicide cases result in death sentences," He said. "Everyone also still takes into consideration her special background. ... In China, it's impossible to make sure that everyone is equal before the law."
Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.
The official Xinhua News Agency has depicted Gu as a depressed woman on medication who turned willful murderer after Heywood threatened the safety of her son, Bo Guagua. Gu is accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
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