Chinese Parents of Wrongfully Executed Man to Receive $388,000 in Compensation

March 31, 2017

A Chinese court has recently determined that around 2.68 million yuan ($388,000) will be awarded as compensation to the parents of a wrongfully executed young man 21 years ago.

In 1995, Nie Shubin was found guilty of raping and murdering a woman from Shijiazhuang. Just a month after his conviction, the 21-year-old man was executed. It was only in December that the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) conceded that the man had a wrongful conviction due to “flaws in the Chinese justice system.”

The amount, determined by the Higher People’s Court in Hebei Province, was a fraction of what the parents demanded, which was 14 million yuan ($2 million), Shanghaiist reports.

Almost half of the compensation, amounting to 1.3 million yuan ($188,630), accounts for “emotional damage caused to the parents, while around 1.26 million yuan ($182,825) was for his death and burial cost. The amount of 52,000 yuan ($7,545) was intended for infringement of personal freedom and additional 64,000 yuan ($9,286) as financial aid to the mother.

New developments about the case emerged in 2005 when a man named Wang Shujin admitted to committing the crimes that Nie was found guilty of. The re-opening of the investigation, however, was delayed due to the department transfer of Liu Jinguo, the former head of the party’s provincial Political and Legal Affairs Committee at the time.

It took Nie’s parents over a decade of repeated petitioning before the case was re-opened by the SPC. Eventually, the SPC would overturn the conviction after discovering that several legal violations had been committed during Nie’s trial.

The decision cited insufficient evidence, lost documents, and the suspect’s confession was judged to be inadmissible since it was gained through torture. Key information relating to the crime, such as the time and cause of death had not been properly established by the prosecution.

A similar case occurred to a man named Hugjiltu, who was found innocent two years ago from the crimes he was found guilty of 18 years before. The 18-year-old from Inner Mongolia was executed two months after being convicted of rape and murder. Hugjiltu’s parents were awarded 2.06 million yuan in compensation a month after the conviction was overturned in 2015.

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