A Chinese court yesterday acquitted a death-row inmate convicted of double murder, in a high-profile case that observers say may be a rare exception in a court system riddled with wrongful convictions.
Citing insufficient evidence, the high court of China’s eastern province of Fujian overturned the guilty verdict against Nian Bin (念斌), a grocery shop owner accused of fatally poisoning a fellow villager’s two children in 2006.
TORTURE
Nian was immediately freed after the announcement. He spent eight years behind bars and repeatedly appealed his guilty verdict, with lawyers saying he was tortured into confessing to the crime.
Critics say political pressure to solve homicide cases often leads to wrongful convictions based on coerced confessions in China’s heavily controlled judiciary system.
However, Nian’s case has attracted some of China’s most prominent lawyers and wide attention in social media outlets that put the local court on the spot.
“It is a case of life and death, and the court had little wriggling room when members of the public were watching closely,” legal expert Zhang Xuezhong (張雪忠) said, adding that viewing the rare acquittal as progress in China’s judiciary independence and rule of law would be premature.
Zhang said it was troublesome that the trial court convicted Nian two more times, even after higher courts cast doubt on the case, adding that the higher court’s authority to review death sentences worked out in Nian’s favor.
UNPRECEDENTED
Maya Wang, a Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch, said the acquittal is likely to be unprecedented.
However, referring to the court’s reluctance to review Nian’s torture allegations, Wang said it is too early to say whether the acquittal signaled any judiciary improvement.
“It took much concerted effort by some of China’s best-known rights lawyers to get the current court to acknowledge that there is insufficient evidence,” Wang said. “The true test of progress is how the judiciary will handle the aftermath of Nian’s acquittal: Will it hold the police officers who tortured Nian accountable?”
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