Chinese man cleared of schoolgirl’s rape and murder after serving 13 years of life sentence

A man who served 13 years in prison for the rape and murder of a schoolgirl had his conviction overturned by a court in eastern China on Monday, mainland media reported.

Zhang Zhichao had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy for raping and killing a girl surnamed Gao, who was a fellow pupil at No 2 High School of Linmu county in Shandong.

But he was freed after the verdict by Linyi Intermediate People’s Court was overturned on Monday by Shandong High People’s Court, The Beijing News reported.

Gao went missing in January 2005 and her body was found in a boys’ toilet at the school a month later. Within days, police arrested Zhang based on allegations from two other pupils at the school, according to The Beijing News.

Zhang’s family filed an appeal in 2011, after Zhang was visited in prison by his mother, Ma Yuping, and told her the police had obtained his confession by torturing him, the report stated. The Linyi intermediate court rejected the appeal, as did the High People’s Court of Shandong.

But the family continued to appeal. They petitioned the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing three times in 2016 and 2017 until finally convincing it to reopen the case.

In November 2017, the supreme court ordered the Shandong high court to review the verdict, after finding that Zhang’s conviction was based on questionable facts and contradictory evidence, news portal Thepaper.cn reported.

The high court’s hearing was postponed six times before finally taking place last month. Zhang was cleared, along with his classmate, Wang Guangchao, who had received a three-year suspended sentence in 2006 for giving false evidence and covering up a crime.

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According to the original 2006 verdict, Zhang had raped Gao and strangled her to death before moving her body to a toilet. As he left the scene, he met Wang and asked him to guard the toilet while he went to a grocery shop in the school to buy a lock to bolt the toilet door.

But according to Wang Dianxue, Zhang’s lawyer, the police did not find Zhang’s sperm or hair at the scene, and had said the crime had taken place at 6.20am despite other pupils saying that Zhang had attended a flag-raising ceremony at 6.15am, taken part in exercise at 6.20 and been in their classroom at 6.30. The shop owner had also said that his shop did not open until 7.20am.

Last month, a man who had served 11 years of a life sentence for murdering a 75-year-old woman and leaving her body in a toilet cesspit was cleared by a court in Xinjiang, in China’s far west. A local court reopened Li Jiangong’s case and overturned the previous verdict, saying it was based on “insubstantial and insufficient evidence”, The Beijing News reported.