The new lawyer for Lin Senhao, a former university student who was convicted of killing his roommate with poison, handed seven petitions to the nation's highest court on Thursday after the court started reviewing his death sentence.

The petitions included requests for holding public hearings during the death sentence review, transferring Lin to a detention center out of Shanghai, and reinvestigating the cause of death.

Lin, 29, a former medical student at Fudan University in Shanghai, was sentenced to death in February 2014 for the murder of his roommate and classmate Huang Yang, who died of liver, kidney and lung failure more than two weeks after falling ill.