A man who was acquitted after spending 25 years in prison in northeast China’s Jilin Province was offered compensation from the state.
The Intermediate People’s Court in the city of Liaoyuan ruled that Liu Zhonglin should be paid 4.6 million yuan (around 670,000 U.S. dollars) for his wrongful 9,217-day incarceration.
In 1990, a woman was found dead in a crop field by a villager in Dongliao County. Liu was identified as a suspect and detained soon after. Liu was given a suspended death sentence for murder by the court in 1994, and a year later the provincial higher people’s court upheld the ruling.
Liu and his family repeatedly appealed, and he had his reprieved death sentence commuted to a 25-year prison term.
He was released in 2016. His verdict was revoked in April 2018 as the higher court ruled that the previous convictions were based on unclear facts and insufficient evidence.
The Supreme People’s Court said courts nationwide heard over 28,000 state compensation cases from 2013 to October 2018, as the country makes more efforts to protect the legitimate rights of those who have been wronged.
Among them were the overturned cases of Huugjilt and Nie Shubin, both executed for rape and murder based on wrongful convictions. The two were acquitted in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Agencies