China: Mother's Fight to Exonerate Executed Son Highlights Gaping Holes in Justice System

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNxLUWJ0LaUXyNfudRN0WUsZs2KhVuafr-fTEuSwiX4wl1cvrYswlyYsLuCi9n9S7gkmOQT2BXV-cBxa3SKHz_AIAfYpN0BHWMmK4P83JzsryTr27ikqkXvA7xKhytfrUP3jXsWqnrRtM/s1600/Nie+Shubin+%2528file+photo%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Nie Shubin, wrongfully executed at age 20" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNxLUWJ0LaUXyNfudRN0WUsZs2KhVuafr-fTEuSwiX4wl1cvrYswlyYsLuCi9n9S7gkmOQT2BXV-cBxa3SKHz_AIAfYpN0BHWMmK4P83JzsryTr27ikqkXvA7xKhytfrUP3jXsWqnrRtM/s400/Nie+Shubin+%2528file+photo%2529.jpg" title="Nie Shubin, wrongfully executed at age 20" width="372" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nie Shubin, wrongfully executed at age 20</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>"Invisible forces" in police have delayed a retrial for Nie Shubin after fresh evidence, suggesting his innocence, emerged, says former journalist</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 2 decades after a young man in the northern province of Hebei was executed for the alleged rape and murder of a woman, his mother is anxiously awaiting a retrial to clear his name.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Zhang Huanzhi's only son, <a href="http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.fr/search/label/Nie%20Shubin" target="_blank">Nie Shubin</a>, was executed in 1995 - when he was 20 - for raping and killing a woman in a cornfield near Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital. A decade later, another man arrested for a separate crime, confessed to the murder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Zhang had fought for years after this fresh evidence emerged to exonerate her son, but she kept on hitting a wall. The case is back in the public spotlight after the country's highest court, the Supreme People's Court, on June 6 ordered a court in the eastern province of Shandong to review the 1995 ruling, saying evidence that lead to his death sentence were "unreliable and incomplete."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Zhang's dogged pursuit, lodging repeated appeals at courts in her home province Hebei and in Beijing, has helped turn Nie's case into an example of the flaws in the Chinese criminal justice system, including the use of torture, lack of due process and lax review of death sentences.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But Nie's is not the only incident of a possible miscarriage of justice reported in recent years. In February, a man from the eastern province of Zhejiang, Chen Man, convicted of arson and murder, was allowed to walk free after languishing in prison for 23 years when his sentence was overturned due to lack of evidence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In late 2014, a court in Inner Mongolia said an 18-year-old killed by firing squad in 1996 for alleged rape and murder, was innocent. The Inner Mongolia Higher People's Court said the defendant, Huugjilt, was wrongfully convicted after being tortured into making a confession.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nie's case had also galvanized the legal community, media and the public to scrutinize the gaping holes in the country's justice system. "There is no doubt Nie will be exonerated soon," said Ma Yulong, a former reporter at Dahe Daily, a newspaper in the central province of Henan, who has followed Nie's case starting in 2005.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nie's retrial can help in some measure to restore public faith in China's legal system, said Li Shuting, the lawyer representing his family.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Quest for Justice</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Shandong High Court in-charge of reviewing the case said the evidence on which the original verdict was based was incomplete because many questions have gone unanswered, such as the exact time the crime was committed and the weapon used for the murder. However, the court has not announced a date for a retrial.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nie was sentenced for premeditated rape and murder on March 15, 1995 by the intermediate court in Shijiazhuang, after a closed-door trial, state media reports show. He was executed a month later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2005, another suspect named Wang Shujin, arrested for a similar crime, confessed to raping and killing several women, one of whom turned out to be the victim in Nie's case. Ma was the 1st to break the news, which attracted wide public attention to the case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After this fresh evidence emerged, Liu Jinguo, the head of the party's provincial Political and Legal Affairs Committee at the time, who oversaw the security and legal systems in Hebei, set up a special team to reopen Nie's case and ordered the results to be published within one month, Ma told Caixin on June 14.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHdORZ6-js4-Iinb2s_c374KhN5jWym715boa1OqIFwQdClNE00Uc1zUq1F3ZegEZEGTffjz5vJkaQ28VSkWPPDGCmRUpr_Q6b3Z_3s0Jy5ZtWRYItjWwI3YzP99MnRCI0aeD7bdohsVS/s1600/execution+china.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A Chinese police officer lights an inmate's last cigarette minutes before his execution." border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHdORZ6-js4-Iinb2s_c374KhN5jWym715boa1OqIFwQdClNE00Uc1zUq1F3ZegEZEGTffjz5vJkaQ28VSkWPPDGCmRUpr_Q6b3Z_3s0Jy5ZtWRYItjWwI3YzP99MnRCI0aeD7bdohsVS/s400/execution+china.jpg" title="A Chinese police officer lights an inmate's last cigarette minutes before his execution." width="258" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Chinese police officer lights an inmate's last<br />cigarette minutes before his execution.</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Liu's order gave Nie's family a glimmer of hope, but it vanished quickly. The investigation stalled when Liu was promoted shortly afterwards to vice minister of public security in Beijing, said Ma.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">From then on, Zhang Huanzhi has made countless trips to courts in Hebei and Beijing, to appeal her son's case, but she was turned down by officials who said her documents were incomplete.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It wasn't until July 2007, when the Supreme Court in Beijing accepted Zhang's appeal and ordered the Hebei High Court to review the case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But this court never carried out the review. "We tried every means possible to get a retrial, but they were all in vain," said Li.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In March 2007, the other suspect, Wang, received the death penalty for 4 counts of murder and rape. But this did not include the victim in Nie's case, although Wang admitted to the crime. In a twist of fate, Wang even appealed his verdict and insisted that he had killed the woman Nie was charged with murdering. But his appeal was turned down by the Hebei court in 2013.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wang is now on death row, waiting for the Supreme Court to review his sentence, but the process has been delayed due to his connection to Nie's case, Li said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ma said he had learned from sources in the Hebei public security system that officials had tortured Wang, forcing him to recant his confession connected to the 1994 murder in Shijiazhuang before the 2nd trial.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There are "invisible" forces in Hebei's police and legal system that have resisted the reopening of Nie's case, said Ma.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Fresh Hope</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In December 2014, the Supreme Court ordered a high court in another province Shandong to re-examine the files of Nie's case. The Supreme Court's June decision for a retrial, which comes after four delays, had rekindled the family's hopes to have Nie exonerated.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Li told Caixin that there were many holes in the evidence presented including Nie's testimony, the murder weapon used and even the exact date of his execution. He has been collecting evidence that show Nie was tortured while in custody and highlight deficiencies in due process when handling the case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The case "is obviously a wrongful conviction with little complexity, but it has taken more than ten years to get a retrial due to delays by officials in Hebei," said Li.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Police offices' over reliance on harsh interrogation techniques to elicit confessions from suspects in criminal investigation cases have led to many wrongful convictions, said Li. Some investigators and officials rush to close a case to secure bonuses and promotion, he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fundamentally, "the lack of independence of the judicial system had led to the miscarriage of justice," said the former journalist Ma. "Without further legal reform, there will be other cases like this in future."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: caixin.com, June 18, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

China Exoneration False confessions Innocence Nie Shubin Police Posthumous Torture China: Mother's Fight to Exonerate Executed Son Highlights Gaping Holes in Justice System

Nie Shubin, wrongfully executed at age 20 "Invisible forces" in police have delayed a retrial for Nie Shubin after fresh evidence,...

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For 50 Years, You've Had "The Right to Remain Silent"

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVmFCt7PAgeu2hgUBVMfBd0VGk1JlbDYYPDagm2068K11g4skJNevhnx7grENhBCDYWgRaAbVjtTgVZbqRjHe1UAryGv0rfWzxAZBi2Yvef3wZLV1Z588ypKKyg_7r0LJNvTT9uUVBKo/s1600/Police+interrogation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdVmFCt7PAgeu2hgUBVMfBd0VGk1JlbDYYPDagm2068K11g4skJNevhnx7grENhBCDYWgRaAbVjtTgVZbqRjHe1UAryGv0rfWzxAZBi2Yvef3wZLV1Z588ypKKyg_7r0LJNvTT9uUVBKo/s400/Police+interrogation.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>So why do so many suspects confess to crimes they didn't commit?</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You have the right to remain silent."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you've ever watched any of the tens of thousands of hours of television devoted to crime dramas, you know the 1st warning given to suspects who are arrested and questioned. And the 2nd: "Anything you say can and will be used against you." The Miranda warnings - named for<i> Miranda v. Arizona</i>, the 1966 Supreme Court decision that required them - celebrate their 50th anniversary on June 13. In that period, they have become so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget their origin and purpose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Miranda </i>was the culmination of 30 years of Supreme Court cases that were designed to protect criminal suspects from abuse in police interrogations. The earliest of these decisions prohibited violence and torture. The 1st concern was to prevent confessions that are "unreliable"- that is, false.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1966, false confessions seemed like a rare problem. 50 years later, we have seen hundreds of exonerations of innocent defendants who confessed to terrible crimes after they received Miranda warnings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a good time to take stock.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Do innocent people really confess without torture?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Why would an innocent person ever confess to a murder or some other terrible violent crime?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Torture would explain it. That was the issue in <i>Brown v. Mississippi</i> in 1936, the 1st case in which the Supreme Court excluded a confession from a state court prosecution. 3 suspects had been tortured for days. Asked how severely one defendant was whipped, the deputy in charge testified: "Not too much for a Negro; not as much as I would have done if it were left to me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Between 1936 and 1966 the use of torture to extract confessions declined greatly, a major accomplishment by American courts and criminal justice reformers. When <i>Miranda </i>was written, a shift was underway to more "modern" methods of interrogation: isolation, deception, manipulation and exhaustion rather than beating. Without torture or threats of death or violence, it seems implausible that an innocent suspect would confess to a serious crime. That is precisely why confessions are such powerful evidence of guilt. But we know it happens, time and again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The National Registry of Exonerations has collected data on 1,810 exonerations in the United States since 1989 (as of June 7, 2016). They include 227 cases of innocent men and women who confessed, 13 % of the total, all after receiving Miranda warnings (at least according to the police). Nearly 3/4 of those false confessions were homicide cases.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But these exonerations deeply understate the extent of the problem.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">First, most suspects who falsely confess - probably the great majority - are never convicted at all. In a classic 2004 study, Steven Drizin and Richard Leo identified 125 proven false confessions in the United States from 1971 through 2002. Only about 1/3 were cases of exoneration after conviction. In most, charges were dismissed before trial or never filed at all because of indisputable proof of innocence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">2nd, few convictions based on false confessions are cleared by exoneration. That's true for all wrongful convictions, but especially for those based on confessions. It's very hard to convince people that a defendant who confessed is innocent. We see this in the cases: Exonerations of defendants who confessed are more likely to depend on the most unassailable evidence, DNA, to overcome the weight of a confession. 42 % of exonerated defendants who had confessed were cleared by DNA tests, compared to only 21 percent of exonerees who had not confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In some cases, even exculpatory DNA evidence doesn't help. In October 1992, after a grueling four-day interrogation, 19-year-old Juan Rivera falsely confessed to the rape-murder of an 11-year-old girl in Lake County, Illinois. In fact, he confessed twice. His 1st confession was so riddled with factual errors that the detectives made him do it again to "clear up" the inconsistencies, even though Rivera was plainly in a state of mental collapse.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rivera was convicted of murder in 1993, and again in 1996 after his 1st conviction was reversed for a host of legal errors. In 2005, DNA tests proved that a different man was the source of semen recovered from the body of the victim. Rivera's conviction was vacated but the prosecution took him to trial again, and in 2009, despite the DNA evidence, Rivera was convicted a 3rd time. Finally, in 2011, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that River's conviction was "unjustified and cannot stand" and dismissed the charges.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Juan Rivera barely overcame his false confession even with conclusive DNA evidence of innocence. Without it, he'd be in prison today - together with other innocent defendants who confessed but did not have DNA tests to rescue them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>False confessions by co-defendants</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In many cases, innocent suspects who confess implicate others who are also innocent. Some do it because that's the story their interrogators want to hear. John Kogut, for example, not only falsely confessed to his own involvement in murder, he also said he did it with 2 friends Dennis Halsted and John Restivo, both of whom (like Kogut) spent 20 years in prison before they were exonerated in 2005.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And some innocent suspects who confess blame others to deflect responsibility and reduce their punishment. Richard Ochoa, for example, was facing the death penalty for the murder of Nancy DePriest in Austin, Texas in 1988. He confessed, named his roommate Richard Danziger as the actual killer and agreed to plead guilty and testify against Danziger. Both were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Both were exonerated by DNA in 2002.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Registry includes 195 exonerations with confessions by co-defendants who implicated the exonerees, 11 % of all exonerations. The net result is that in 19 % of all exonerations in the United States - and in 34 % of homicide exonerations - the innocent defendant confessed or was implicated by a false confession of a co-defendant, or both.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Who falsely confesses?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All sorts of people falsely confess, but two groups are particularly vulnerable: young suspects and those with mental disabilities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1983, for example, Earl Washington, a 22-year-old black man with an IQ of about 69, was arrested in Culpeper, Virginia, for burglary and malicious wounding. Over 2 days of questioning, Washington "confessed" to 5 separate crimes, 4 of which were not pursued because his confessions did not match the actual crimes and the victims could not identify Washington as the criminal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Washington's 5th confession, however, was to a murder, that of Rebecca Lynn Williams. His initial version - before police officers cleaned it up - was riddled with errors. He did not know the race of the victim (white), the address where she was killed, or that she was raped. Nonetheless, Washington was convicted and sentenced to death in January 1984. He was exonerated by DNA 16 years later, in 2000.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Overall, of exonerees with reported mental illness or intellectual disability, 72 % had confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Young suspects fared almost as badly. 40 % of exonerees who were under 18 at the time of the crime falsely confessed, including 53 % of 14- and 15-year olds, and 86 % of the few who were 13 years old or younger. By comparison, only 7 % of adult exonerees without reported mental disabilities falsely confessed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Why do all these innocent defendants confess?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Innocent suspects confess because they are terrified and confused and exhausted; because they are deceived or tricked; because they don't understand what they are doing; because they feel hopeless and helpless and isolated. But what leads to this desperate predicament? <i>Miranda </i>sets the stage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In part, <i>Miranda </i>was a step in the Supreme Court's campaign to eliminate violence in interrogations. But <i>Miranda </i>also ratified the "modern practice of in-custody interrogation [which] is psychologically, rather than physically, oriented." <i>Miranda </i>described how this is done:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The officers who conduct "modern" interrogations may lie about the evidence and tell the suspect that his fingerprints were found at the scene; that a codefendant already confessed and put the blame on him; that he was seen by an eyewitness. They routinely say that they already have him dead to rights and that this is his only chance to tell his side of the story and help his cause; that the victim must have provoked him; that what he did is understandable. They may describe dire consequences if he does not come clean, perhaps the death penalty, and imply leniency if he does. This can go on for days, in isolation, with police officers constantly repeating that they know the suspect is guilty, that the evidence is overwhelming, that this is his only chance to help himself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court recognized that this process "exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty, and trades on the weakness of individuals," but it did not forbid any of these practices. As a result, <i>Miranda </i>is regularly cited as authority for the legality of all of these coercive techniques.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Instead of regulating the process of non-violent interrogation, the court required police to give warnings before they start, and then only continue if the suspect waives his right to silence. But most do waive their rights at the outset of the ordeal; it's hard to tell an officer who has you under arrest that you won't talk to him. After that, the issue almost never comes up again.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By the time they confess, <i>Miranda </i>is a distant memory, if not entirely forgotten. The process works. Many suspects confess after <i>Miranda </i>warnings and most are guilty; that's why these techniques are used and trusted. But some are innocent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Can we do better? Here again, <i>Miranda </i>is a good starting point.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The court noted that it's difficult to regulate interrogations because we don't know what goes on: "Interrogation still takes place in privacy. Privacy results in secrecy, and this, in turn, results in a gap in our knowledge as to what, in fact, goes on in the interrogation rooms."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's changing. 50 years ago almost no interrogations were electronically recorded. The FBI, for example, prohibited recording. Now the FBI requires it, as do 23 states and many local police forces, at least in homicide cases. It should be universal. Recording greatly helps us evaluate any claim that a confession was false, and it has taught us how to improve the conduct of interrogations. It's a good start.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: The Marshall Project, Commentary, June 2016. Samuel Gross is the editor and co-founder of the National Registry of Exonerations and a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. Maurice Possley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and senior researcher at the registry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Death-Penalty-News-206848499362906/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

DNA Exoneration False confessions FBI Innocence Mental Illness Mental retardation Miranda Police Torture USA For 50 Years, You've Had "The Right to Remain Silent"

So why do so many suspects confess to crimes they didn't commit? "You have the right to remain silent." If you've ever wat...

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