Sun Wangang Murder Case (孙万刚故意杀人案)

The defendant/exoneree 

  • Sun Wangang (孙万刚), born on November 4, 1975; he was twenty-one and a college student when the case began and was twenty-nine when he was finally acquitted.

Facts

  • On January 3, 1996, a student called the police to report finding a female body near a factory. The police on the crime scene said the victim was Chen Xinghui and parts of her body were cut off and missing.  Sun was suspected because he went out with Chen the night before and went back to the place of another classmate alone after the time the crime was committed. Sun was placed under sheltering for investigation, a police compulsory measure, on January 3, 1996.

  • Other special facts about this case:

    • Sun claimed that he and the victim had been to the crime scene before he was knocked out by something. When he woke up, he found that Chen was talking with a man in black. The man threatened Sun with a knife and asked him to leave. Sun left and went to his classmate’s place. He and his classmate went back to the scene after a few hours but did not find Chen.

Procedural history 

  • Sun Wangang was detained on April 24, 1996, and arrested on April 30, 1996. He was charged with the crime of intentional murder of his girlfriend and classmate Chen Xinghui.

  • On September 20, 1996, Sun was convicted and sentenced to death by the Zhaotong Intermediate Court of Yunnan Province.

  • Sun appealed his conviction to the Yunnan Provincial High Court. The high court remanded the case back to Zhaotong Intermediate Court for re-trial on the ground of unclear facts and insufficient evidence. 

  • On May 9, 1998, the Zhaotong Intermediate Court again convicted Sun and sentenced him to death.

  • On Sun’s second appeal on November 12, 1998, the Yunnan Provincial High Court changed the death sentence to a death penalty with two years suspension. Sun was sent to a prison.

  • On January 15, 2004, the Yunnan Provincial High Court reopened the case and eventually acquitted Sun on February 10, 2004.

Date of the conviction

September 20, 1996

Date the wrongful conviction was reversed

February 10, 2004

Days incarcerated

2,960

Why was the case reopened/reversed 

  • Sun and his parents kept petitioning for Sun’s innocence after the conviction.

  • In September 2002, Li Maofu a serial rapist-killer who resides in the same county as Sun, was arrested. Sun and his father thought that Li could be the real perpetrator in Sun’s case and wrote to the courts and the procuratorates to alert them.  

  • In 2003, Sun’s petition caught the attention of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (the SPP) because he mentioned that Li could be the real perpetrator. The SPP forwarded Sun’s materials to the Yunnan People’s Procuratorate.

  • The Yunnan Procuratorate reviewed the entire case dossier and found several cause for doubt in Sun’s case. After interviews with Li and witnesses in Li’s case, and a review of Li’s case dossiers, the Yunnan People’s Procuratorate excluded Li as the real perpetrator in Sun’s case.

  • The Yunnan Procuratorate proposed to the Yunnan High Court to reopen Sun’s case on the ground that: 1) a blood test does not rule out the possibility of another perpetrator; 2) Sun made both exculpatory statements and guilty confessions.  His confession did not match the forensic evidence.

Factors contributing to the wrongful conviction

False confession

  • Sun claimed that he was tortured by the police and that his guilty confession was completely extorted through deprivation of food, water, and sleep.

Flawed police investigation

  • The police officers did not pursue any witness to explain why there was a button and a buckle found at the crime scene that did not belong to Sun nor Chen.  

  • Among Sun’s written confessions, one of them was not signed by Sun, as required by the law. Instead, a police officer signed Sun’s name.

Problematic forensic evidence

  • The blood samples were contaminated before they reached the lab. No human blood was found on the alleged murder knife. No human sperm was found at the crime scene or in the victim’s body to corroborate Sun’s confession that he committed the murder to cover up the crime of rape.

Defense lawyer's errors/absence

  • None. Sun was represented by a lawyer who argued that Sun was innocent.

Court's errors

  • The Zhaotong Intermediate Court did not change the entire collegial panel at retrial after the case was remanded by the Yunnan Provincial High Court. This is a violation of criminal procedural law.

Other developments

  • In October 2004, Sun received RMB 165,608 as state compensation.

  • After the case was reopened, Sun was represented by Liu Hule, the defense attorney who also represented Du Peiwu (another wrongful conviction exoneree, whose case is also included in this archive).

Information sources