![]() | Back from the Dead China's party-run courts have one of the highest conviction rates in the world, with forced confessions remaining a central feature. Despite recent prohibitions on evidence obtained through coercion or torture, forced confessions continue to undermine the Chinese judicial system. Recounting some harrowing cases of wrongful conviction, acclaimed legal scholar and novelist He Jiahong analyzes many problems in China's justice system. In one such case, Teng Xingshan was convicted in 1988 and later executed for murdering his mistress, but almost six years later it was discovered that the supposed victim, Shi Xiaorong, was still alive. In 2005, Teng's children submitted a complaint to the Hunan High People's Court, which then issued a revised judgment. In another case, She Xianglin was convicted of murdering his wife in 1994 and was sentenced to death, but this sentence was later commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment. In 2005, She's wife, presumed dead for over eleven years, "returned to life"; She was released from prison two weeks later, retried and found not guilty. He Jiahong is professor of law and director of the Center for Common Law and the Institute of Evidence at Renmin University in Beijing. He has published dozens of law books and five crime novels in Chinese, including Hanging Devils and Black Holes, which have been translated into several languages. He is a senior adviser to the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, and has often lectured at leading universities in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia. |
![hidden image for function call](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/1x1.png)