Chongqing Court Exonerates Man Who Retracted Coerced Confession

March 29, 2006

The Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court (IPC) exonerated a man of a robbery charge two years after it initially convicted and sentenced him to death for the same crime, according to a March 2 Legal Daily article (in Chinese). After an initial conviction on March 11, 2004, Cao Hongbing appealed his death sentence to the Chongqing High People's Court (HPC). On December 7, 2004, the Chongqing HPC vacated the lower court's order and remanded the case for retrial. During the retrial, held on March 30, 2005, Cao retracted his original admission of guilt to the police and asserted that his admission was coerced. The Chongqing IPC exonerated Cao on February 27, concluding upon retrial that:

The Chongqing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court (IPC) exonerated a man of a robbery charge two years after it initially convicted and sentenced him to death for the same crime, according to a March 2 Legal Daily article (in Chinese). After an initial conviction on March 11, 2004, Cao Hongbing appealed his death sentence to the Chongqing High People's Court (HPC). On December 7, 2004, the Chongqing HPC vacated the lower court's order and remanded the case for retrial. During the retrial, held on March 30, 2005, Cao retracted his original admission of guilt to the police and asserted that his admission was coerced. The Chongqing IPC exonerated Cao on February 27, concluding upon retrial that:

  • The procuratorate unreasonably dismissed contradictions in the evidence presented at retrial;
  • The procuratorate failed to link together a tight chain of circumstantial evidence; and
  • The procuratorate's case failed to meet the legal requirement (under Article 162(1) of China's Criminal Procedure Law (CPL)) that "the facts of [the] case are clear, [and] the evidence is reliable and sufficient."

The Chongqing IPC's reversal of its original judgment calls into question law enforcement's heavy reliance on pre-trial statements, particularly in light of the increasing number of statements that are retracted at trial, as noted in a February 14 Beijing Youth Daily article (reprinted by Xinhua, in Chinese). Under Article 93 of the CPL, interrogation of the accused begins by asking him whether he has committed a criminal act and "let[ting] him state the circumstances of his guilt or explain his innocence." Article 93 imposes upon the accused a legal obligation to answer these questions and allows the accused to remain silent only if a question is "irrelevant to the case," effectively creating a duty to confess. Although responses provided during interrogation may later be used as evidence at trial, Zhang Sihan, a professor at the National Judges College, commented in the Beijing Youth Daily article that the retraction of pre-trial statements "has really been increasing each year," and that in recent years, "oral statements have become not so reliable anymore."

Under the CPL, a defendant's statement alone cannot serve as the basis for a criminal judgment. Article 46 clearly states, "In the decision of all cases, stress shall be laid on evidence, investigation, and study; credence shall not be readily given to oral statements." Article 46 further prohibits a court from convicting and sentencing a defendant "if there is only his statement but no evidence." Liu Jinghua, Deputy Chief Judge of the Criminal Division of the Beijing High People's Court, reiterated this legal requirement and stated in the Beijing Youth Daily article that those handling criminal cases "should not excessively rely on oral statements." Liu explained that "oral statements are merely one type of evidence," and that "only when all evidence of guilt is linked together so that it forms a chain of evidence, should a court then judge a person to be guilty."

Nonetheless, the CECC has previously reported on the problem of wrongful convictions that are based in part on pre-trial statements. The CECC's 2005 Annual Report noted that the news that a court in Hubei province had wrongfully convicted and imprisoned She Xianglin caused a public outcry and intensified calls to consider broad reforms to China's criminal justice system. In a February 16 Voice of America article, Mr. She's lawyer commented on the lessons that China's criminal justice system should be taking from his client's wrongful conviction and subsequent exoneration. He called into question the system's bias toward a presumption of guilt and reiterated, "If conclusive evidence and facts do not exist, then [a court] cannot judge a certain individual to be [a criminal]." The 2005 Annual Report stated that "coerced confessions remain widespread" and that a number of social and institutional factors, such as "lack of legal consciousness, poor training, and weak forensic skills on the part of investigative personnel (problems that lead to an over-reliance on confessions)," as well as "a presumption of guilt at all stages of the criminal process," contribute to this problem.

For additional information on She Xianglin's case and the issue of coerced confessions, see China's "Strike Hard" Campaign and New Scrutiny of the Criminal Justice System, as well as Torture and Abuse in Custody, both in Section III(b) of the 2005 Annual Report.