Senior Official Acknowledges Role of Police Abuses in Wrongful Convictions

December 8, 2006

Wang Zhenchuan, Deputy Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), acknowledged at a November 18 seminar in Sanya city, Hainan province, that almost all wrongful convictions in China involve police abuses during the investigation stage, according to a Legal Daily report (in Chinese) on the next day. Wang called on local procuratorates to strengthen their supervision over criminal investigations, and to bring into line police who extract confessions through torture or who illegally gather evidence.

Wang Zhenchuan, Deputy Procurator-General of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP), acknowledged at a November 18 seminar in Sanya city, Hainan province, that almost all wrongful convictions in China involve police abuses during the investigation stage, according to a Legal Daily report (in Chinese) on the next day. Wang called on local procuratorates to strengthen their supervision over criminal investigations, and to bring into line police who extract confessions through torture or who illegally gather evidence. In addition, he urged procuratorates to deal strictly with cases involving the use of torture to extract a confession, the use of force to gather evidence, or an illegal search, among other criminal offenses. Wang was addressing a group of about 30 officials and legal scholars attending a seminar on illegal evidence gathering and wrongful conviction, according to a November 19 China News Net report (in Chinese).

Official Chinese statistics show that only about 30 people are wrongfully convicted in China each year due to police abuses, but Wang said that the real number could be higher, according to a November 20 Xinhua report. In 2005 and 2006, domestic news media brought attention to a series of cases in which the defendant had been wrongfully convicted of a crime, and suggested that torture may have been used to coerce a confession from the defendants in those cases. A January 5, 2006, China Youth Daily article (in Chinese) described two of the cases, involving the wrongful convictions of Nie Shubin, in Hebei province, and She Xianglin, in Hubei province. The article counted these cases among China's 10 most influential legal cases in 2005. Following his visit to China in late 2005, Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, reported that Chinese rules of evidence "create incentives for interrogators to obtain confessions through torture."

Official remarks by Wang and others dismiss Nowak's claim that torture remains widespread throughout China. Nowak's report noted that police and other public security officers make up 47 percent of perpetrators of alleged torture in China. By contrast, Wang's comments indicated that illegal evidence gathering exists to "varying degrees" and that wrongful convictions occur "from time to time," but the comments did not specifically address occurrences of torture, according to a November 20 Xinhua report (in Chinese). During a September 19, 2006, meeting before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Nowak reaffirmed his finding that torture is widely used in China, according to a UN press release on the same day. At the same meeting, Ambassador Sha Zukang, the Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN Office at Geneva, maintained that cases of torture are "isolated" occurrences. Sha emphasized that the Chinese government "had implemented measures, such as investigating criminal cases of abuse of power," and that "recent changes in the law would allow cases of forced confession to be fully investigated."

Since 2001, the Chinese government has initiated several reform measures that aim to further prevent and punish torture and other abuses by officials. Xinhua reported that according to He Jiahong, head of the Evidence Law Research Institute at Renmin University, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress Standing Committee established in 2001 a working group of scholars to look into the issue of illegally obtained evidence. A 2001 SPP circular acknowledged that confessions coerced under torture have led to several miscarriages of justice, and identified the following four areas for reform:

  • A change in the philosophy of the police, to prevent a presumption of guilt or the desire to strike against crime from overshadowing the protection of suspects' rights.
  • Enhanced supervision by the procuratorate, and coordination with police investigators to highlight the significance of procedural rules and evidence in approving an arrest or indictment.
  • Elimination of procuratorial reliance on illegally obtained evidence to prove a case.
  • Prosecution of any official who has relied on torture to coerce a confession.

In addition, SPP provisions that went into effect on July 26 detail the criteria for prosecuting official abuses of power, including the use of torture to coerce a confession.

Official statements suggest that a gap still remains between legislative reforms and their impact in practice. Chen Lianfu, head of the SPP office that investigates official misconduct and rights infringement, said on November 19 that systemic reforms still need to be implemented, including through better supervision by the procuratorate and prosecution of police misconduct, according to a Xinhua report (in Chinese) on the same day. Neither Chen nor Wang provided statistics detailing how many officials have been prosecuted for torture in recent years. Nowak's December 2, 2005, press release noted that the SPP itself investigated 82 cases of official misconduct in all of China in 2004, and that 33 law enforcement officials were prosecuted for torture during the first nine months of 2005. Nowak concluded, however, that "these official figures are clearly the tip of the iceberg in a country the size of China and demonstrate that most victims and their families are reluctant to file complaints for fear of reprisal or lack of confidence that their complaints will be addressed effectively."

For additional information on torture, illegal evidence gathering, and wrongful convictions, see "Torture and Abuse in Custody" and "Fairness of Criminal Trials and Appeals," in Section V(b) of the CECC's 2006 Annual Report.