bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Keira Lu Huang

A Chinese man who was freed on Tuesday after spending 20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit has told his story of his life behind bars to mainland media, including how he was tortured by police and his attempt to commit suicide.
Yang Ming, 50, from the southwest province of Guizhou, was accused in 1995 of murdering his girlfriend but insisted he was innocent when the case when to trial.
The court said he strangled her, and gave him a suspended death sentence, which on the mainland is usually converted to life in jail.
Yang maintained his innocence, and his family petitioned repeatedly for provincial authorities to review the case.
The Guizhou prosecutors' office started to review the case last October, although it was not clear what prompted their decision.
When the retrial began in June, the prosecutors agreed the original ruling was flawed.
A key witness at the trial in 1995 said she had only heard that Yang was at the murder scene. She was in police custody on suspicion of murder at the time, and the charge against her was dropped after her testimony.
Yang told the online news portal Thepaper.cn that the police tortured him while he was in custody and said he would get a lesser sentence of 15 years if he confessed. 
“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” Yang said. “Commuting my sentence would have been an insult to me,” Yang said. “Once I accepted that, I wouldn’t have been able to appeal.
“I told them, if you commute my sentence, something big will happen,” Yang told the website, referring to his threat to commit suicide.
Nevertheless, investigators still changed his death sentence suspended for two years, to life in prison, without Yang’s consent.
According to Yang, in an effort to obtain a confession, two policemen and other staff at the detention centre beat from the second day of his detention.
Yang claimed he was beaten at night when he fell asleep, and often the abuse continued until he passed out. Police also slapped his face with a towel and hit him from behind with a stick. His little finger was broken.
One of his torturers, Yang claimed, was promised 4,000 yuan (HK$4,900) by police if he could get Yang to confess.
During his 20 years in jail, Yang wrote more than 700 appeals but rarely received a response.
Yang said it was hard to accept the verdict when his retrial set him free.
“They announced that I was innocent because of unclear facts and insufficient evidence,” Yang said. “But I did not break any law at all.”
Yang is the latest person to have his name cleared by the courts. Last December, the Inner Mongolia Higher People's Court said Huugjilt, who was 18 when he was executed in 1996, was innocent. He had been wrongfully convicted of rape and murder.
Nian Bin in Fujian was declared innocent of poisoning his neighbor's children last August, and set free after eight years in jail.



Chinese man, falsely jailed for 20 years for murder, ‘refused to confess under torture’

Yang Ming, centre, at home after 20 years with his mother and daughter from an earlier marriage, who was five when Yang was jailed. Photo: Thepaper.cn

Yang Ming bows to his mother on his release from prison, where he spent 20 years for a murder he did not commit. Photo: Thepaper.cn

Chinese man who served 20 years in jail for murder of girlfriend walks free after retrial