Two men wrongly convicted of crimes apply for compensation

Two men who both spent more than a decade in prison after being wrongly convicted and were declared “not guilty” early this year applied for state compensation to courts over the past two days.

Wu Chunhong — a villager from Henan province who had his name cleared in April after evidence to support his international homicide conviction was deemed insufficient — applied for more than 18.7 million yuan ($2.64 million) in compensation to the Henan High People’s Court on Tuesday.

The court has accepted the application, which seeks 9.73 million yuan for Wu’s wrongful detention and 5 million yuan for mental anguish, according to Wu’s daughter.

Wu also asked for 4 million yuan to cover medical fees and economic losses caused by the wrongful conviction, his daughter told media.

“My father also hoped judicial officials who worked on the case would make a public apology to repair the negative reputation he has endured as a result of the miscarriage of justice,” she added.

On April 1, more than 15 years after Wu was wrongly convicted, the court overturned an original ruling in which he was sentenced to life in prison and announced that Wu, now 50, was innocent, “as the chain of evidence in his case was not complete to prove his conviction”.

On Nov 15, 2004, a 3-year-old boy in Shangqiu, Henan, died after eating homemade food containing poisoned flour. His older brother fell ill and was admitted to the hospital but recovered. Seven days later, Wu was named as the suspect.

A year later, Wu was given a suspended death sentence for intentional homicide by the Shangqiu Intermediate People’s Court, but the Henan High People’s Court ordered a retrial after Wu appealed.

Over the next three years, the intermediate people’s court handed down the same sentence to Wu twice, with the high people’s court rejecting both results and sending the case back to the lower court each time.

In 2008, Wu was sentenced to life in prison, with the high people’s court upholding that verdict.

After frequent appeals from Wu’s family, the Supreme People’s Court, China’s top court, demanded the Henan High People’s Court retry the case after reviewing the appeal materials. The rehearing was held in 2019.

On Monday, Zhang Zhichao, another man who had been wrongly detained for more than 10 years for rape, also applied for about 7.89 million yuan in compensation after he was found not guilty in January due to insufficient evidence.

Yuan Feng and Chen Xi, Zhang’s lawyers, went to the Linyi Intermediate People’s Court in Shandong province to submit the application for their client. The compensation consists of about 1.89 million yuan for Zhang’s wrongful detention and 6 million yuan for his mental anguish.

Zhang also asked officials responsible for the case to publicly apologize to him through the media, the lawyers said.

On Jan 13, the Shandong High People’s Court overturned an original

verdict in which Zhang was sentenced to life for raping a girl, and acquitted him after a retrial.

In 2005, the body of a missing girl was found in a restroom at a high school in Linyi. Zhang, then 16, was named the suspect and detained by local police.

He was given a life sentence by the Linyi Intermediate People’s Court in 2006, but he disagreed with the ruling and said he was tortured during the police interrogation.

Since then, his mother had been appealing the ruling, and in 2017 the country’s top court demanded that the Shandong High People’s Court rehear the case.

Two years later, the rehearing opened, with prosecutors suggesting that Zhang be acquitted due to insufficient evidence.