Five People in Zhejiang Wrongly Jailed for Seventeen Years

AuthorChina Law Digest

In two robbing taxi driver cases, two taxi drivers,Xu Caihua and Chen Jingbo were murdered in Zhejiang Province and Xiaoshang City on March 20, 1995 and August 12. In a verdict entered on July 11, 1997 by Hanzhou Intermediate People’s Court, Chen Jianyang, Tian Weidong were sentenced to death for robbery and theftWang Jianping was sentenced to death with a conviction of robbery, Zhu Youping was sentenced to death with stay, and Tiao Xiaoping was sentenced to life sentence towith a conviction of robbery.

Zhejiang High People’s Court found that application of law is appropriate in the first instance trial. However, three of five appellants were sentenced death penalty werechanged to death with stay because of lacking of fingerprint evidence in its death penalty review procedure. It was said from information resource closing to Zhejiang High People’s Court that there were many disagreements when reviewing this case but nobody in the Judicial Committee of Zhejiang High People’s Court dared to overthrow the death penalty.

In the spring of 2012, after comparing fingerprint by Zhejiang police department, anew criminal suspect namely Xiang was identified as a suspect to murder the cab drivers in Xiaoshan City.

According to lawyer Xin Benfeng who was a defense lawyer in the second instance trial, no witness was called to testify among the 34 witnesses mentioned by HanZhou City’s People’s Procuratorate in the first instance trial. Tian Weidong had never confessed his crime. Tian said in his appeal document that he “was unable to suffer from torture and had to bite his tongue.” An evidence from hospital...

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