Chinese court is put to test as high-profile murder case returns to spotlight

A highly anticipated case of a convicted murderer went to court in northern Hebei province on Tuesday, in what some scholars say could put China's legal system to the test.

On the first day of trial, death row inmate Wang Shujin, 46, was accused of lying when he confessed to a 1994 murder, the court heard. The Hebei man, who was convicted of raping and killing three women in 1994 and 1995, is appealing his death sentence, asking for leniency because he confessed to a fourth murder case.

But a prosecutor with the Higher People’s Court, in provincial capital Shijiazhuang, said Wang's reason for appealing was not valid. "Crucial" details provided by Wang "significantly mismatched" evidence found at the crime scene of the fourth case, the prosecutor said.

“If it were this simple, why did it take eight full years for Hebei to present the evidence?” prominent Peking University law professor He Weifang wrote on Weibo after the prosecutor tried to dismiss Wang’s appeal. “Are they really impartial?”

Wang had confessed to four murders after he was arrested in 2005, but he was convicted in only three of them. Another man, 20-year-old Nie Shubin, had taken the fall for an August 1994 rape and murder of a woman in a Shijiazhuang suburb. Nie was executed in 1995.

At the time, Wang's confession shocked observers across China. Legal scholars and activists were surprised again after Hebei’s court charged Wang for only three murders, ignoring the fourth.
“It’s a huge irony,” law professor He said in an earlier interview with Chinese media. “While Wang yells, ‘There’s this other crime I committed. Convict me please!’,  the court tells him, ‘Oh no, we are only after your other crimes'.”

Wang wasn’t aware of Nie’s conviction at the time of his confession, nor did he know Nie. He admitted to have acted alone, according to Chinese media reports. Wang was sentenced in 2007 and promptly appealed. He argued that the court had failed to charge him for the August 1994 murder, and he demanded leniency because of his contribution in proving Nie's innocence.