The redress of an unjust case is only part of the truth
"They said my son was not killed by Zhang Yuhuan. But my son was killed. Who killed it? Always give me an explanation." Recently, Shu Ailan, the mother of the child victim in the original "Zhang Yuhuan case", was interviewed. The families of the two murdered children have been brought back to people's vision.
27 years ago, Zhang Yuhuan was accused of killing two children in the same village and was sentenced to death with a suspended death sentence 7 years later.
After 20 years of complaints and 9778 days in custody, he was commuted not guilty in August this year.
A few days ago, Zhang Yuhuan’s family received a national compensation decision. The Jiangxi Provincial High People’s Court paid Zhang Yuhuan a total of 4.96 million yuan in state compensation, including personal freedom compensation and mental damage compensation for 9,778 days of innocent detention.
The "Zhang Yuhuan case" changed the fate of three families.
Zhang Yuhuan waited for justice, while the victim's family continued to search for the truth.
Liu Hehua, the mother of another child victim, often feels out of breath recently-the person she has always hated is innocent, so who should she hate?
In addition to the real culprit, there should also be makers of wrongful cases.
On October 22, the Supreme People’s Court disclosed at the National Court Supervision Work Conference that since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, courts across the country have handled 1.78 million cases of various types of trial supervision, 3.86 million cases of penalty enforcement changes, and retrials and criminal sentences. There were 11,000 cases, and 58 major criminal wrongdoing cases including Zhang’s uncle and nephew case, Huge Jile pattern, and Nie Shubin case were corrected in accordance with the law.
In the process of rectifying these wrongful cases, it took 10 years for Zhang’s uncle and nephew case, 20 years for Huge Jile pattern, 22 years for Nie Shubin... Only some of these wrong cases have been completely clarified, and some truths May never be able to track it again.
Looking back at the occurrence of these cases, it can be found that the defendant's confession played a decisive role.
For example, the She Xianglin case that occurred in 1994 and sentenced in 1998, and the Zhao Zuohai case that occurred in 1998 and sentenced in 2003, did not use the existing and relatively mature DNA identification technology to determine the identity of the victim, and only relied on the victim. The way that relatives performed visual identification of the highly decomposed corpse led to a major mistake in the identification of the facts of the case in identifying the victim.
A few years later, the "return of the dead", the unjust case was corrected, and both Zhao Zuohai and She Xianglin, who had regained their freedom, reported that the confession at that time was forced.
In the case of Nie Shubin in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang, the only direct evidence was Nie Shubin’s confession of guilt. Evidence such as on-site investigation records, autopsy reports, physical evidence, and witness testimony can only confirm the fact that the victim died, and cannot confirm that the death of the victim was related to Nie Shubin.
However, Nie Shubin was still regarded as a criminal suspect and defendant in the rape and murder case and was sentenced to death.
In 2005, another defendant, Wang Shujin, admitted that he was the real culprit in the Nie Shubin case, which caused widespread public concern after media reports.
On December 2, 2016, the Second Circuit Court of the Supreme People's Court publicly pronounced Nie Shubin's intentional murder and rape of women in the retrial case, announcing the revocation of the original judgment and the acquittal of Nie Shubin.
In Wang Shujin's second-instance judgment, the court found that Wang Shujin’s confession was significantly different from the rape and intentional homicide case in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang in some key circumstances, and that the case was not the work of Wang Shujin.
The truth is not yet known.
The German jurist Radbruch once said: "Since the existence of criminal law, the state has taken the dual responsibility of retaliation on behalf of the victim... Criminal law must not only face offenders to protect the state, but also face state protection. The offender not only faces the offender, but also faces the prosecutor to protect the citizens, becoming a Magna Carta for citizens to oppose judicial tyranny and error."
In order to avoid unjust, false and wrong cases, my country’s Criminal Procedure Law stipulated as early as 1979: “The sentence of all cases must emphasize evidence, investigation and research, and not credulity of confession. If there is only a confession by the defendant and no other evidence, the defendant cannot be identified Guilty and punished; if there is no confession from the defendant and the evidence is sufficient and reliable, the defendant can be found guilty and punished."
The revised Criminal Procedure Law in 2012 further established the criminal proof standard of "reliable and sufficient evidence" and refined the conditions for the reliable and sufficient evidence.
Without detailed investigation of the physical evidence, the unjust case was made and the perpetrator was at large.
In January of this year, in the case of Zhang Zhichao's rape and murder in the retrial of the Shandong Higher People's Court, which was found not guilty, there was a serious conflict between the testimonies of the two witnesses in the original trial, and there was also a contradiction between the testimonies of the two witnesses and Zhang Zhichao's confession.
In addition, four classmates proved that the defendant Zhang Zhichao had no time to commit the crime, and these testimonies were not presented in the original trial.
There are doubts about the authenticity and legality of Zhang Zhichao's guilty confession.
At the same time, no objective evidence pointing to Zhang Zhichao's crime was found at the scene of the crime, and a complete evidence system could not be formed.
Based on this, the Shandong Higher People's Court held the retrial that the facts of Zhang Zhichao's rape crimes found in the original trial were unclear and insufficient evidence.
Zhang Zhichao’s defense lawyer found that the victim’s body was covered with a 90 cm x 108 cm white plastic woven bag. According to the words on the woven bag, it was basically confirmed that the woven bag was a bag for exporting handicrafts such as wickerwork.
The lawyer believes that the woven bag can only be possessed and used by the murderer, and the source can basically be identified by investigating the source.
In the original trial, the verdict avoided this physical evidence because it was not clear.
In the past 15 years, whether this clue can be pursued and whether the truth of the case can be revealed has become a mystery.
In the name of "doubt from nothing," Zhang Yuhuan still has to endure many groundless suspicions and accusations, and cannot really get rid of the case.
In a sense, whether it is a redressed victim or a victim of the original case, finding the true culprit is their biggest goal.
Zhang Yuhuan’s brother, Zhang Minqiang, said: “We hope that the public security organs can reopen the case for review of the cause of death of the two children who died that year, capture the real murderer, explain to the families of the deceased, and explain to the society. If the public security organs can catch the truth. Furious, we are willing to give out 50,000 yuan from Zhang Yuhuan’s compensation to reward police officers who participated in the investigation."
In recent years, with the large-scale application of new technologies in the criminal investigation field, we continue to see some old cases solved, such as the 28-year dust-covered case of "the murder of a female student of the former Nanjing Medical College".
But for the victims of Zhang Yuhuan's case, rehabilitating the victims is not the end.
Source of Liu Yan: China Youth Daily