Hebei man gets death sentence for killing

Wang Shujin, a native of Hebei province who has been sitting on death row for about a decade for serial rapes and killings, was sentenced to death for intentional homicide by the province’s Handan Intermediate People’s Court on Tuesday after a retrial.

The court also sentenced Wang to 15 years in prison for rape, in combination with the death sentence for his homicide conviction.

Wang had been charged with three rapes, two murders and one attempted murder. However, as a result of the retrial, the court said in a statement that Wang was found to have committed four rapes, three killings and one attempted killing from 1993 to 1995 and clarified that his actions constituted the crimes of rape and intentional homicide under the Criminal Law.

“Wang, who turned himself in, shouldn’t be leniently punished because his criminal intent was despicable, and what he did has had a great negative effect on — and has caused extremely serious damage to — society,” added the court, which also ordered Wang to pay civil compensation to the victims and their families.

Wang, 53, drew widespread attention in 2005 when he was detained and voluntarily confessed to several rapes and murders. Hebei prosecutors at the time decided to charge him with three rapes, two killings and an attempted murder.

Among the cases Wang confessed to, he said he had raped and killed a woman surnamed Zhang in November 1993. This confession was not supported by facts or evidence presented during his original trial.

In 2007, Wang was sentenced to death by the Handan court for the rapes and murders he had been charged with. He appealed the decision because the sentence did not include his rape and murder of Zhang and another woman surnamed Kang, which he insisted he had committed. In 2013, the Hebei High People’s Court rejected his appeal and upheld the death sentence handed down by the Handan court.

The death sentence decision was then submitted to the Supreme People’s Court, China’s top court, for a review.

On Nov 9, however, the top court did not approve Wang’s death sentence. Instead, it sent Wang’s case back to the Handan court for retrial because of newly discovered evidence.

On Friday, when the Handan court retried the case, it said the new evidence was the result of a DNA test on a skeleton found by police following directions Wang gave them. The DNA test proved the skeleton was Zhang’s, so it became possible for Wang to be charged with her rape and murder.

Though Wang has finally been identified as Zhang’s killer, he remains unsatisfied with the ruling because it does not include another death he claims to have had a hand in.

In 2005, Wang had also confessed to raping and killing a woman surnamed Kang in a cornfield in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei, in 1994. Although this claim was not supported by the Handan court, it quickly drew widespread attention as another man, Nie Shubin, had already been sentenced to death and executed in 1995 for the rape and killing.

Wang’s confession to Kang’s murder also accelerated a review and prompted another investigation into the case. In December 2016, the top court publicly announced that Nie was not guilty, as evidence in the case was not strong enough to prove his conviction.

During the retrial on Friday, Wang still insisted he had raped and killed Kang, but the prosecutors still rejected the confession because his testimony didn’t match the physical evidence in the case.

Zhu Aimin, Wang’s lawyer, said after Tuesday’s sentencing announcement that his client will appeal to a higher court because he believes he should also be punished for Kang’s death.