The mainland will soon release a judicial document that will for the first time spell out that confessions obtained through torture will not be admissible evidence in court, according to The Southern Metropolis News.
Even though the mainland criminal code has long banned torture during the questioning of suspects, and even made it a criminal offence, forced confessions still overshadow the judicial system.
The Renmin University School of Law recently researched 137 wrongful convictions imposed in the 1980s and determined that 164 men and women had been wrongfully deprived of a total of 720 years of freedom, one had been executed, and another had died in prison. Half of the wrongful convictions involved murder charges.
The Southern Metropolis News, which is based in Guangzhou, quoted Renmin University professor Liu Pinxin as saying that the reason wrongful convictions tended to concentrate on felonies was that police were under pressure to solve the cases within a time limit, and there was little social sympathy for people suspected of serious crimes.
As the mainland reviews its Criminal Procedure Law, debate has been rekindled over whether criminal law should follow the principle of 'protecting individual rights' or 'protecting the masses through heavy punishment'. The way evidence is obtained is one of the issues at the forefront.
Using the death penalty as a starting point, the Supreme Procuratorate will soon introduce a new regulation on death-penalty trials and the use of evidence, which will specify the inadmissibility of confessions obtained through torture.
China University of Political Science and Law professor Wang Shunan hailed the pending regulation as 'an extremely important step'. He said it would also force the country's police and procuratorates to shift from an emphasis on confession and testimony to collecting solid circumstantial and documentary evidence.