Ten judicial issues that sparked online debate last year

1. Nie Shubin was pardoned 21 years after he was wrongly executed for rape and murder. 2. Xu Yuyu, 18, a student from Linyi, Shandong province, died of a heart attack after being cheated out of the money she planned to use for tuition fees. Her case went viral online and accelerated the release of legal guidelines to deal with telecom fraudsters. 3. It was announced that corrupt officials given suspended death sentences will spend the rest of their lives in prison without parole, one of the harshest punishments available under China’s Criminal Law. 4. Chen Man, 53, was freed in Hainan province, 23 years after he was wrongfully imprisoned for murder. It was China’s longest case of wrongful detention. 5. Tianjin No 2 Intermediate People’s Court imposed prison sentences on 49 defendants for negligence after devastating blasts at a chemicals warehouse in the northern port city that killed at least 165 people. 6. The Supreme People’s Court, the nation’s top judicial body, handed down a death sentence to Jia Jinglong, who killed a village head in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, during a dispute about house demolitions. 7. Four employees of QVOD Technology — a popular but now-defunct, internet company in Guangdong province — were sent to prison after being found guilty of broadcasting pornography as part of the company’s online services. 8. The Supreme People’s Court overturned a previous ruling and ordered a Greek company to pay a Chinese transport authority 6.59 million yuan ($985,000) for breaching a salvage agreement. 9. Fujian Provincial High People’s Court was ordered to rehear a case in which a 20-year-old man was sentenced to life for buying 24 BB guns online. 10. More than 300 suspects were arrested after a woman and her daughter were discovered to have illegally bought and sold vaccines in Shandong province, East China.