China has issued new rules saying evidence obtained illegally — such as through torture — cannot be used in death penalty cases and other criminal prosecutions.
The new regulations — posted on the central government’s Web site on Sunday — make it clear that evidence with unclear origins, confessions obtained through torture, and testimony acquired through violence and threats are invalid, particularly in death penalty cases.
It is the first time China has explicitly stated that evidence obtained under torture or duress is illegal and inadmissible in court. The move is expected to help cut down on death sentences and reduce forced confessions.
“Since the system was not perfect, the standards on reinforcing the law were not unified and the law executors were not equally competent. Problems occurred in the handling of cases and they should not be ignored,” according to a statement on the Web site.
China executes more people annually than any country in the world, though it does not release an official count. Amnesty International estimated China put at least 1,718 people to death in 2008.
In 2008, China’s top court said about 15 percent of death sentence verdicts by lower courts were found to have problems, the China Daily reported yesterday.
The frequent use of torture by police to obtain confessions was recently highlighted in the case of Zhao Zuohai, a man who spent 11 years in jail after being beaten into confessing the murder of a man who wasn’t even dead.
After the man he supposedly killed returned to their hometown in Henan Province, Zhao, 57, was freed. Zhao said he was forced to confess because police beat him during interrogations.
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