A case study on shortage of evidence in wrongful convictions in China
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1365712720983933 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
A case study on shortage
of evidence in wrongful
convictions in China
HE Jiahong
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Abstract
The judiciary can only get to know the facts of a case that occurred in the past through limited
evidence, and even with the shortage of evidence, the facts are fuzzy just like the moon on
water. Wrongful convictions are very often based on a shortage of evidence and an ambiguity
of facts. In those cases, judges face a dilemma in finding facts and applying rules of law. In order
to prevent wrongful convictions, it is important to clarify the standard of evidence, to promote
the legality of criminal investigation and to improve the assessment of evidence.
Keywords
China, evidence, proof, shortage, wrongful conviction
Introduction
Criminal cases are events of the past, so judicial personnel
1
cannot establish the facts directly and must
use the indirect means of reviewing a range of evidence to do so. There are two types of evidence in
criminal cases: the first, that which objectively exists when a case happens—for example, traces of
physical evidence on the body and in the surrounding environment during a homicide, or the impressions
created in the minds of the people involved in the case. Because this kind of evidence lies in the real,
objective world, it is possible for it to be discovered by the people handling the case, and also possible for
it to remain undiscovered. Therefore, it is called ‘potential evidence’. The second kind is evidence
collated and used by either those handling the case or the parties involved in the case; in a murder, for
example, this includes all the different types of evidence collected by the investigators, such as confes-
sions, bloodstained clothes or the murder weapon. This kind of evidence can be discovered and used by
the people handling the case, therefore it is called ‘real evidence’.
2
Corresponding author:
HE Jiahong, Renmin University of China, 59 Zhongguancun St, Haidian District, Beijing, 100872, China.
E-mail: hjiahong@126.com
1. The term ‘judicial personnel’ includes judges and procurators in Chinese.
2. The terms of ‘potential evidence’ and ‘real evidence’ are created by this author to clarify the concept of evidence in Chinese.
The International Journalof
Evidence & Proof
2021, Vol. 25(1) 36–52
ªThe Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1365712720983933
journals.sagepub.com/home/epj
In the criminal justice system, real evidence is the only resource which truly has the ability to develop
into proof. There is always less ‘real evidence’ than ‘potential evidence’; that is, the evidence that the
investigators or parties involved gather and use is less than the evidence which objectively exists. In
most cases, it is not possible for these people to discover and use all of the evidence related to the case
which objectively exists. To put it another way, the evidence which objectively exists is of a large
quantity, and it is hard to avoid a situation where some of the potential evidence is not converted into real
evidence – no matter whether that is because the people involved have not discovered the evidence or
have not used it. This situation results in the shortage of evidence and a dilemma in judicial proof, which
can be seen in the wrongful convictions in China.
3
The wrongful conviction case of Nie Shubin
At around 5pm on 5 August 1994, a woman by the surname of Kang, who worked at a hydraulic parts
factory in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, was raped and murdered in a cornfield by the side of a road in
the outskirts of the city. Based on tips from the public, police identified Nie Shubin as a suspect, and
obtained a confession to the crime. On 15 March 1995, the Shijiazhuang Intermediate Court found the
defendant Nie Shubin guilty of premeditated murder and sentenced him to death. They also found him
guilty of rape and sentenced him to 15 years in prison for that crime, with the primary evidence being his
confession. On 25 April the High Provincial People’s Court of Hebei released its final verdict approving
the death sentence and two days later Nie Shubin was executed (see Zhao, 2007).
In March 2005, the alleged serial rapist, Wang Shujin, was arrested for other crimes, and while being
interrogated confessed that he had raped and murdered a young woman in a cornfield by the side of the
road in the outskirts of Shijiazhuang. His narration of the crime and knowledge of its location, which he
identified, agreed with details of the rape-murder of the female Kang. Nie Shubin’s mother had never
believed that her son, who had always been an honest and timid boy, could have committed rape and
murder, and so upon hearing this news made even more insistent appeals on her son’s behalf, never-
theless to no avail (see Zhao, 2009). A police officer involved in the case said: ‘If this had happened ten
years ago we might well have determined Wang to be the murderer with only his confession to go on, and
no other corroborating evidence. But cases can no longer be made with confession alone, not to mention
this case has already been closed, and one person has been executed’ (Zhou, 2005).
On 25 June 2013, the second-instance trial of Wang Shujin for rapes and murders finally began. Six
years after Wang’s shocking confession, the Hebei High People’s Court tried the case again at the
Handan Intermediate People’s Court.
4
The event garnered much public attention. Arguments in the
retrial instigated a very strange outlook: the defendant maintained that he was indeed the true culprit in
Kang’s case, while the prosecution making the charges maintained that he was not. In fact, the public
prosecutors’ attention focused not on whether Wang Shujin was guilty, but whether Nie Shubin was
guilty. In other words, if Wang was the true culprit, the conviction of Nie was a big mistake!
In the courtroom on 25 June the prosecution supplied four reasons why Wang Shujin could not have
raped and murdered the victim Kang. First, Wang Shujin’s testimony regarding the body did not
correspond with the facts of the case. The corpse was clothed with a white undershirt; the neck had
been obscured by corn stalks, which when removed, revealed a flower-printed shirt. Wang Shujin’s
testimony lacked these details. Sec ond, Wang’s testimony as to the metho d of the murder did not
correspond with the facts. The cause of death was strangulation but Wang said he had first choked the
victim, then stomped her on the chest until she died. But apart from the shirt wrapped around the victim’s
3. In this paper, the word ‘China’ is referred to ‘Mainland China’, not including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
4. In China, the courts are established at four levels: the basic people’s courts, the intermediate people’s courts, the high people’s
courts, and the Supreme People’s Court. The system is a centralised model, in which the court at a lower level is under the
leadership of the court at a higher level. Therefore, a higher court may use the courtroom of a lower court to try cases where the
defendant is living or detained in the locality.
Jiahong 37
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