China Posthumously Overturns Death Sentence for Wrongly Convicted Ethnic Minority

Huugjilt, an ethnic Mongolian living in China,
was 18 years old when authorities accused him of raping and killing
a woman in a public restroom. He was eventually convicted and
sentenced to death and executed a couple of months later. That was
in 1996.

Now, a court in Inner Mongolia, the Chinese region in which
Huugjilt was executed, has ruled that he was wrongly convicted, a
judge even offering “sincere apologies” to the family. Rather than
raping and killing the woman, Huugjilt had apparently heard her
screams and approached to try to help. Authorities found out their
mistake when another man confessed to the killing in 2005 in the
course of confessing other crimes.

The Chinese government says it is taking the possibility of more
wrongful convictions seriously. The Independent
reports:

Human rights activists hailed the decision [to overturn
Huugjilt’ conviction] as Communist Party-run courts in China have a
high conviction rate, which leads to allegations that apparent
confessions are forced from the accused by methods of torture.

Detectives have admitted that they felt pressed to secure a
conviction in a crack down on crime and Huugjilt was declared
guilty in April 1996 before he was executed two months later. A
retrial was scheduled last month with the confession from Zhihong
presented to the judge.

China’s high court has since taken charge of reviewing all death
sentences and has pledged to carry out executions for only the most
heinous crimes. The country also has more convictions than the
world combined, however the data is kept top secret.

Another man, still on death row, was acquitted in August. He
says he was tortured into confessing he had killed two children
with poison before being spending six years in prison.