Killer convicted after youth put to death

BEIJING: A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a convicted serial killer to death for a murder he confessed to a decade ago and 19 years after a teenager was executed for the crime.

Zhao Zhihong, 42, was convicted of murder, rape and robbery by the Hohhot Intermediate People’s Court in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Mr Zhao was arrested in 2005 and confessed to a string of rape and murder cases, including the 1996 rape and strangulation of a woman in the toilet of a Hohhot textile factory.

An 18-year-old named Hugjiltu was tried, convicted, sentenced and executed 61 days after the woman’s murder.

But the killing was not even among the nine for which Mr Zhao was tried in 2006.

Hugjiltu’s family tried for years to prove the teenager’s innocence and he was finally exonerated last December, clearing the way for Mr Zhao to face trial.

The case highlights the shortcomings of China’s Communist Party-controlled legal system, where acquittals are extremely rare − 99.93% of defendants in criminal cases were found guilty in 2013, according to official statistics.

The use of force to extract confessions remains widespread throughout the country and defendants often do not have effective defence in criminal trials, leading to regular miscarriages of justice.

AFP Zhao Zhihong, a man who confessed to murdering a woman in China 18 years ago, on trial in the Intermediate People’s Court in Hohhot, in North China’s Inner Mongolia region. A teenager was wrongly executed for the 1996 killing. Zhihong confessed to the...