Court may clear teen executed for rape murder
Print Edition
A COURT is to revisit the case of a teenager executed for the rape and murder of a woman his parents said he did not commit.
The decision by the court in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region yesterday came after a nine-year campaign by Li Sanren and Shang Aiyun on behalf of their son, Huugjilt.
They launched their bid to have him declared innocent in 2005 following the arrest of serial killer Zhao Zhihong, who claimed he was responsible for the woman’s death.
The couple were overcome with emotion when they received a notice from officials of the Inner Mongolia Higher People’s Court yesterday morning.
“We have waited for the court decision for such a long time,” Shang told the Legal Evening News.
The presiding judge with the court, Bobatu, issued a retrial in absentia notice to the parents of Huugjilt, who had been found guilty of raping and murdering a woman in a public toilet in Hohhot on April 9, 1996, Xinhua news agency said.
At a press conference, court spokesman Li Shengchen said the decision to reopen the case was based on findings that the evidence in the case was either unclear or insufficient.
But he cautioned: “It is very hard to check evidence now as the case took place so long ago.”
President of the higher court, Hu Yifeng, earlier this month said any errors in the previous ruling, should there have been any, had to be addressed.
Huugjilt and Yan Feng were resting during their night shift at a woolen mill in the regional capital Hohhot when they heard a woman crying for help. They rushed in the direction of the cries but found her already dead. She was naked and had been raped and strangled.
Huugjilt called the police, but instead of their thanks, he was named the culprit. Just 44 days later, he was sentenced to death. Another 18 days after that, he was executed.
However, the case hit the headlines again in October 2005 after the arrest of serial killer Zhao Zhihong in Hohhot.
Police had linked Zhao to 21 cases of murder, rape and theft, but he also confessed to a 22nd — the one that had led to Huugjilt’s conviction. He was able to describe the murder in great detail, giving a highly accurate account of where, when and how he had killed the woman.
Details of the hasty investigation in 1996 also cast doubts on Huugjilt’s conviction.
He Feng, formerly deputy police chief in Hohhot, said he had learned that a semen sample taken from the victim’s body hadn’t been sent for DNA testing, yesterday’s Beijing News reported.
“Investigators might have been too confident at that time and thought Huugjilt could be convicted though they didn’t have the evidence,” he said.
Lawyer Miao Li, who is helping Huugjilt’s family, said the court should have acquitted in the absence of such key evidence.
Hua Lijia, a former Hohhot prosecutor, agreed, according to the newspaper.
Hua said Huugjilt should never have been charged.
Besides the lack of evidence, he said police seemed to have made their minds up about his guilt and had tortured him to extract a confession.
A document detailing the dialogue between Huugjilt and prosecutors showed police had forced him to admit his guilt, the newspaper reported.
He had told prosecutors: “Police said they could allow me to pee only if I said I was the killer. They also said the woman wasn’t dead. They said they would release me as soon as I confessed.”
Zhao’s insistence in 2005 that he was guilty attracted the central government’s attention and a re-examination was ordered. It made little progress.
In an interview with Phoenix Satellite TV in 2011, Shang said she and her husband had visited Beijing more than 20 times and had written nearly 80 letters to authorities, without getting any response. They were often intercepted and forcibly taken back to Hohhot.
In May 2010, Zhao Zuohai, from central China’s Henan Province, was acquitted after the man he had been found guilty of killing turned up alive. Zhao had spent 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Prosecutors said Zhao had confessed after torture.
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