The defendant/exoneree
Chen Xiaying (陈夏影) was born on October 18, 1979; he was seventeen years old when he was incarcerated and thirty-six years old when he was finally acquitted.
Huang Xing (黄兴) was born on December 29, 1975; he was twenty-one years old when he was incarcerated and forty years old when he was finally acquitted.
Lin Lifeng (林立峰) was born on July 4, 1977; he was nineteen years old when he was incarcerated and thirty-one years when he died in prison.
Facts
On the evening of April 26, 1996, Tang Ming (唐明), an eleven-year-old boy, was home alone. The next morning, his father came home from work and found the boy had gone missing. Tang’s father found a ransom note on the table in their house, demanding the family deliver 70,000 RMB at a bridge in exchange for the boy’s safe return. That night, Tang’s mother and his uncle, accompanied by the local police, went to the designated bridge to deliver the ransom, but no one showed up. On April 28, another note appeared outside their window that instructed them to meet and deliver the money to a local water supply plant. The note said: “If you are followed by someone again, we will not take the money, and your son will die.” Tang’s family went to the second designated place but didn’t see anyone pick up the ransom. There were no more messages from the kidnapper after this.
On May 20, 1996, human remains were found near a local elementary school. Forensic testing on the skull verified that the deceased was Tang Ming.
Chen, Huang, and Lin were routine visitors to the grocery store owned by Tang’s parents. They were drug addicts and often short of money. Lin told his aunt he saw Tang being strangled to death.
Lin’s aunt reported his comments to the police. The police took Lin into custody to investigate him. During interrogation, Lin gave up the names of his two friends - Huang Xing and Chen Xiaying.
Procedural History
On June 3, 1996, the police placed Chen, Huang, and Lin under residential surveillance.
On June 6, June 7, and July 12, 1996, the police placed Lin, Chen, and Huang under sheltering for investigation (SFI, 收容审查), an administrative compulsory measure enforced by the police.
On August 5, 1996, the police formally arrested the three.
On March 2, 1998, the Fuzhou City People’s Procuratorate indicted the three defendants on kidnapping charges.
On November 6, 1998, the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court (the Intermediate Court) convicted the three defendants of kidnapping. As a minor, Chen was sentenced to life imprisonment; Lin and Huang were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.
Upon the three defendants’ appeal, on September 2, 1999, the Fujian Provincial High People’s Court (the High Court) remanded the case to the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court for retrial because of the unclear facts and insufficient evidence.
On April 11, 2000, the Intermediate Court again convicted the three defendants of kidnapping and sentenced Huang and Lin to death and Chen to life imprisonment.
On July 9, 2001, upon the three defendants’ appeal, the High Court remanded the case to the Intermediate Court for a second retrial on the basis of unclear facts.
On August 22, 2002, the Intermediate Court again convicted the defendants of kidnapping. They sentenced Lin and Huang to death with a two-year reprieve and Chen to life imprisonment.
Upon the defendants’ appeal on November 25, 2006, the High Court upheld the Intermediate Court’s ruling and sent the defendants to prison.
Date of the wrongful conviction
November 6, 1998
Date the wrongful conviction was reversed
May 29, 2015
Days incarcerated
6,930 days for Chen, 6,895 days for Huang, and 4,249 days for Lin before he died of cancer in prison
Why was the case reopened/reversed
The defendants, their families, and lawyers maintained their innocence throughout the trials. They repeatedly petitioned the central and local governments, legislators, and courts before and after the conviction.
Chen’s lawyer connected with several lawyers across China to form a strong defense team. They successfully garnered publicity for the case online and through the media to attract the public’s attention.
Around the same time this case was reopened, the High Court had another high-profile exoneration of a wrongful conviction, the Wu Changlong case. The Chinese Communist Party criticized Fujian Province and Henan Province for having the most wrongful convictions.
In November 2014, Chen’s lawyers found a witness who could prove that Chen was in a different city when the crime occurred. They submitted this witness’ written statement to the High Court and asked to reopen the case.
On May 29, 2015, the High Court reopened the case. After a hearing, they acquitted the defendants of kidnapping because of insufficient evidence and unclear facts.
Factors contributing to the wrongful conviction
False confession
The three defendants were severely tortured and coerced to confess. They were beaten with metal pipes, hanged by their arms, deprived of food and sleep, and threatened with a loaded gun. The police beat Huang so severely that he suffered several incidents of incontinence.
Unreliable witness statements
Several witnesses who initially provided alibis for the defendants were incarcerated, sleep deprived, and beaten until they testified against the defendants. The police sent them to a legal study class (法制学习班). They were confined there for around one to two months.
Lin’s girlfriend and his cousin initially testified that Lin was watching movies with them throughout the night the crime happened. Chen’s mother was beaten and incarcerated for 75 days by the police because she originally stated that Chen was in Shenzhen, 496 miles from Fuqing, where the crime occurred. Several other witnesses, including Chen and Huang’s landlord in Shenzhen, were forced to change their statement from seeing Chen and Huang in Shenzhen to saying that Chen and Huang left Shenzhen and returned to Fuqing.
The court relied on statements from three jail snitches to prove Lin kidnapped and killed the victim.
Lack of forensic evidence
The police claimed that the defendants used a truck, a red nylon rope, a blanket, tape, and a woven bag to abduct the victim. But the prosecution did not present these alleged pieces of evidence to the court or test them for DNA.
Investigators’ tunnel vision
The police received an anonymous phone call on May 16, 1996, in which the caller said in Mandarin (rather than the dialect spoken in Fujian Province) that he overheard his neighbor upstairs talking about a kidnapped child and the body being dropped in the grass near a power substation (where the elementary school was). The police did not pursue this lead. Instead, they forced the defendants to admit that they made the anonymous phone call to distract the police investigation.
Forensic testing of the handwriting on the ransom notes concluded that the same person wrote them but not the defendants. The police did not pursue this lead but forced the defendants to admit they had someone else write the two notes for them. This other person was never identified.
Other developments
Unrelated to the kidnapping case, Huang and Lin were convicted of the crime of false imprisonment and were sentenced to three years in prison. This conviction was not contested.
When this case began, China was in its second “strike hard campaign” against crime (严打). During the campaign, many criminal cases were handled with lax procedural protections and standards of proof.
Lin died of rectal cancer in prison in 2008.
In September 2015, Huang, Chen, and Lin’s parents received state compensation of 5.37 million RMB.