Chinese man cleared of murder after 11 years in jail
- Family’s long fight for a review pays off as dead woman’s neighbour walks free
- Evidence in case was insubstantial and insufficient, court rules
A man who spent more than a decade in prison for the death of a woman whose body was found in a toilet cesspit has been cleared by a court in Xinjiang, western China.
Li Jiangong, 51 was given a suspended death sentence in July 2008 for killing 75-year-old Cao Juying, whose body was found in the toilet cesspit of a cement factory in Korla where she had worked before her retirement. Cao’s mouth had been sealed with adhesive tape and she had head injuries consistent with being hit by a blunt object.
Police concluded she must have been murdered by an acquaintance who lived nearby. Six days after Cao’s body was found, in December 2007, Li – who was one of her neighbours – was arrested. It is unclear whether the two were acquainted.
On Wednesday, after a decade of campaigning by his family, Li was finally pronounced innocent by the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps Second Division’s Intermediate People’s Court, The Beijing News reported.
An initial review of the case, in November 2008, by the High Court in Xinjiang, upheld the original verdict but Li’s family continued through the next decade to appeal to the Supreme People’s Court.