China's flawed judicial system: Top court finds man, executed 21 years ago, innocent

Beijing: More than two decades after he was executed for rape and murder, China’s Supreme Court today overturned the conviction of a young man, in a landmark case that exposed flaws in the Communist nation’s criminal justice system. Nie Shubin, who was 20 years old when he faced a firing squad in 1995 after being convicted of rape and murder, had his conviction overturned by second circuit court under the Supreme People’s Court, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The court re-heard the two-decades-old rape and murder case, in which Nie was found guilty and executed, over concerns that the evidence presented was insufficient. [caption id=“attachment_2914926” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] Nie, from Hebei Province, was convicted of raping and murdering a woman whose body was discovered by her father in a corn field on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang city, in the northern province of Hebei. In 2005, another man confessed to the crime. In December 2014, the SPC, following an application from Hebei Higher People’s Court, assigned the higher court of Shandong Province to review the case. A five-member panel at the Shandong court carried out the review and found that the evidence presented in the original trial did not identify Nie as the perpetrator beyond all doubt, and the trial and investigation were both peppered with major inconsistencies. Thus, the panel, amid emotional scenes in the courtroom, concluded that the evidence was questionable and suggested the case be reheard. “I wanted to tell my son: you’re a good person, you’re innocent,” Zhang Huanzhi, mother of Nie told CNN. Nie would have been 42 this year. Following his execution his father Nie Xuesheng tried to commit suicide, but survived. “My son can finally rest in peace,” the older Nie told The Beijing Times. The SPC statement said the panel, during its review, had examined the case files, listened to the defendant’s lawyer and consulted forensic scientists over the autopsy report. Nie’s case has been compared to a 1996 case in Inner Mongolia, where a teenager named Huugjilt was executed for the rape and murder of a woman the same year. A self-confessed serial rapist and killer later admitted to the crime while in police custody in 2005. In December 2014, Huugjilt’s conviction was officially quashed by Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Higher People’s Court. Many experts have viewed Nie’s plight as an egregious example of widespread police torture, deficient due process and lax review of death sentences. China is the world’s most prolific executioner, killing thousands of people last year, according to rights group Amnesty International.