Wrongful Conviction in China: From the Death Penalty to Exoneration

• In Event: ACCCJ Criminal Trial, Sentencing and Public Petition in China

Abstract

Despite hundreds of wrongful convictions were discovered in China in last decade, we know little about their actual features. Unlike theoretical and legal analysis in previous literatures, this paper collects 117 innocent people who have been sentenced to death, in which 103 of them have been exonerated. We find that: (a) there was an obvious phenomenon of revenging and punitive society, because murder and robbery were the majority of convictions; (b) capital punishment was very dangerous for innocents, given the fact that over half of them were sentenced to death penalty with immediate execution; (c) procuratorate collaborated very well with police, but failed to perform the duties of examination, since 94% of innocents were arrested at the first time, and then prosecuted after investigation; (d) both the first and second instances failed to assume the tasks of error corrections, a few of cases were acquitted in the second instance while 70% of cases were sent to first instance for retrial; (e) it was a long way to be released for capital innocent on condition of 1424.4 days pretrial detention and 2097 days serve time in prison. Although China has made great progresses in the prevention and correction of wrongful convictions involving the death penalty, the paper demonstrates the miscarriage of criminal justice as a result of the absences of presumption of innocence. Two of recommendations are to call for the reform of court procedures and post-conviction review.

Authors

• Moulin Xiong, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics

• Michelle Miao, University of Nottingham