Court acquits man of murder after decades in prison

After spending 23 years behind bars in Northeast China, Jin Zhehong was finally acquitted of rape and murder by the Jilin Provincial Higher People’s Court on Friday.

Jin’s lawyer said the judge responsible for State compensation has contacted him.

Jin, 50, was sentenced to death with a reprieve in 1996 for raping and murdering a 20-year-old woman.

The court overturned the verdict on Friday saying there was insufficient evidence and all charges against him have been dropped.

It took about 10 minutes for the judge to read the judgment, which contained five reasons for the acquittal, including no evidence to proving Jin murdered the woman and incon- sistencies in Jin’s confession.

Accompanied by his son and lawyer, Jin walked out of the court a free man at 10 am Friday. His first statement was for his deceased mother, who died shortly after he was arrested. Jin’s mother firmly believed Jin wasn’t guilty and had asked his younger brother to find out the truth before she died.

“As long as I’m alive, I will be able to prove my innocence!” Jin told the Beijing News. In the past 23 years, he said he never lost hope that one day he would be acquitted.

Jin was sentenced to death with a reprieve in 1996 by the Intermediate People’s Court in Jilin, Jilin Province. Later the higher people’s court of Jilin Province ordered the local court to retry the case twice, but the origi- nal sentence was upheld. In 2014, the higher court decided to reopen the case following a series of media reports on his case.

Jin’s case is one of a number of wrongful convictions that have been overturned by higher people’s courts in recent years.

In 2016, Nie Shubin, who was convicted of raping and murdering a woman and executed at the age of 21 in 1995, was proven innocent by the Supreme People’s Court. Nie’s family received 2.68 million yuan ($389,000) in compensation.