The defendant/exoneree
Liao Haijun (廖海军) was born on April 1, 1981; he was sixteen years old when incarcerated and 37 years old when he was acquitted.
Liao You (廖友), Liao Haijun's stepfather, was incarcerated for five years.
Huang Yuxiu (黄玉秀), Liao Haijun's mother, was incarcerated for five years.
Facts
In Xinji Village of Tangshan City, Hebei Province, at noon on January 17, 1999, Lu Hong (陆红), a nine-year-old girl, went to find her cousin Lu Nan (陆楠), also nine, to return to school together after lunch. The two girls mysteriously went missing. Two days later, a bag containing the girls' bodies was discovered in a dry well near the village, along with a blood-stained rope tying the bodies. The autopsy revealed that the Lu girls were not sexually assaulted but received fatal injuries to their heads and necks caused by a knife.
The police investigated repeatedly throughout the entire village with the assistance of police dogs without finding any evidence. When the police revisited the Liao family, Huang Yuxiu ("Huang"), who had a bad temper, confronted the police and struck a police officer with a ladle. The police immediately took her to the local police station for questioning. Her son and her husband were also subsequently taken there for questioning.
Liao Haijun ("LHJ") had dropped out of middle school and couldn't explain where he was when the crime occurred. The police thus believed LHJ was the murder suspect.
LHJ was then sixteen and thinly built. When the victims' families expressed doubt that LHJ could have killed two nine-year-old girls alone, the police suspected that his parents must be his accomplices. The police alleged that LHJ enticed the victims to his home and killed them with a knife. Huang and Liao You ("LY") allegedly aided LHJ by dumping the two bodies into the dry well.
Procedural History
On January 26, 1999, the police detained LHJ. They officially arrested him on March 8, 1999.
On January 25, 1999, the police placed LY and Huang under residential surveillance. On January 27, 1999, the police detained Huang. On March 6, 1999, the police officially arrested LY and Huang.
On December 8, 2000, after the first hearing, the Tangshan Intermediate People's Court ( the Intermediate Court) asked the Tangshan City Procuratorate (the City Procuratorate) to identify further the bloodstains collected from LHJ's house, citing unclear facts and insufficient evidence. On the same day, the City Procuratorate withdrew the case.
On March 15, 2001, the City Procuratorate indicted the three defendants again. However, on April 18, 2001, they withdrew the indictment because of insufficient evidence.
On October 25, 2001, the Intermediate Court sent a letter to the City Procuratorate, citing unclear facts and insufficient evidence, and asked the prosecutors to handle the case according to the law.
On June 20, 2003, the City Procuratorate, without substantial changes in facts and evidence, indicted LHJ for murder and his parents for harboring a criminal.
On July 9, 2003, the Intermediate Court convicted LHJ of intentional murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment; it convicted LY and Huang of harboring a criminal and sentenced them each to five years in prison. No one appealed.
Date of the wrongful conviction
July 9, 2003
Date the wrongful conviction was reversed
August 9, 2018
Days incarcerated
4,105 days for LHJ (on April 24, 2010, he was released on bail pending retrial), 1,803 days for Huang, and 1,833 days for LY.
Why was the case reopened/reversed
After serving her time, Huang petitioned the courts to reopen the case for retrial. She raised concerns about evidence contamination because of the prolonged time it took to examine physical evidence.
LHJ petitioned for his innocence while serving his time in prison.
The Intermediate Court dismissed the Liao family's petitions in July 2004, and the Hebei Provincial High People's Court ("High Court") dismissed them in September 2006.
On August 13, 2009, the Supreme People's Court accepted the Liao family’s petition and ordered the High Court to retry this case.
On November 25, 2009, the High Court returned the case to the Intermediate Court for retrial.
Two years after the retrial hearings, the Intermediate Court declared the three defendants not guilty in August 2018.
Factors contributing to the wrongful conviction
False Confession
The police severely tortured all three defendants during interrogation. LHJ and Huang claimed that they were slapped, kicked, struck with an electric baton, and had their hands tied before being thrown into the trunk of a car. Medical records show that LY was taken to a local hospital for emergency treatment the day after the first police interrogation and was diagnosed with "traumatic toxic shock, extensive soft tissue damage, metabolic acidosis, and acute renal failure." He was hospitalized for 40 days.
Investigator's Tunnel Vision
The forensic examination reports from the Ministry of Public Security repeatedly indicated that blood stains collected from LHJ's house did not match the victims but matched Huang and LY. Despite this, the police did not stop sending the samples for further testing until the Shanghai local police could not exclude the blood stain from being mixed with the victims' blood.
When the victim's family doubted LHJ alone could be the perpetrator, instead of looking for other possible suspects, the police concluded that LY and Huang must have been LHJ’s accomplices.
When the police did not find a motivation for LHJ, LY, and Huang to commit the crime, they coerced the victims' families to state that the Liao family had arguments and conflicts with them. The victim's families complained to different authorities about this coercion for years.
Insufficient Evidence
The alleged crime tools, the knife and rope, were not discovered in LHJ's house.
Problem in the Chain of Custody
One year after the crime, the police sent two strands of hair allegedly discovered on the rope used to tie the corpses to a forensic lab in a different province. According to DNA analysis, these hairs belonged to LY. However, no documentation confirmed the hair strands were collected at the crime scene.
Prosecutorial misconduct
The prosecution did not send the exculpatory evidence of the two forensic reports from the Ministry of Public Security to the trial court.
Other Development
LY and Huang passed away before the not guilty decision was made, on December 2, 2010, and July 16, 2018, respectively.
LHJ filed a state compensation claim on August 9, 2018, and received an award of RMB 3.4 million on April 22, 2019.
Zhang Baoxiang, a former police officer, was investigated for torturing the defendants in this case. On August 26, 2019, his case was sent to prosecutorial review for indictment.