The defendant/exoneree
Zeng Aiyun (曾爱云), born on January 1, 1977. He was twenty-seven years old when detained and thirty-eight years old when acquitted.
Facts
On October 27, 2003, Zhou Yuheng (“Zhou”), a graduate student of mechanical engineering at Xiangtan University in Hunan Province, was found strangled to death outside the south tower of the university’s School of Engineering. Zeng Aiyun (“Zeng”) and Chen Huazhang (“Chen”), who went to the same school as Zhou, were investigated by the police for suspicion of murder.
Chen and Zhou had the same advisory professor and was jealous of Zhou academically. From October 22, 2003 to October 27, 2003, Chen had gone to four different hospitals under a false name and obtained prescriptions for forty-eight tablets of diazepam, which was found in the victim’s stomach. At Chen’s place, the police found a cord, a plastic cup containing diazepam, some unfinished diazepam bottles, prescriptions for diazepam and the victim’s cellphone.
Zeng was affectionate toward Zhou’s then girlfriend Li Xia (“Li”). On the day of Zhou’s death, Zeng had met with Li and Zhou and told them he would stop pursuing Li. Zeng collapsed to the ground when he learned the victim was Zhou.
Procedural history
Zeng and Chen were placed under criminal detention on October 29, 2003 and were formally arrested on November 11, 2003.
On June 15, 2004, Zeng and Chen were indicted for intentional murder by the Xiangtan People’s Procuratorate (“Xiangtan Procuratorate”).
On September 10, 2004, Zeng and Chen were convicted by the Xiangtan Intermediate People’s Court (“Intermediate Court”) and were sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively.
Upon both defendants’ appeal, on August 1, 2005, the Hunan Provincial High People’s Court (“High Court”) vacated the conviction on the grounds of unclear facts and further investigation required, and remanded the case to the Intermediate Court for retrial.
On December 2, 2005, the Intermediate Court again convicted the defendants and upheld the original sentencing.
Upon both defendants’ second appeal, the High Court sustained the conviction on May 28, 2008 and sent the case to the Supreme People’s Court (“SPC”) for death penalty review.
On September 25, 2008, the SPC disapproved Zeng’s death sentence and remanded the case to the High Court for retrial.
On March 30, 2009, the High Court vacated Zeng’s conviction and sentence, and remanded the case to the Intermediate Court for retrial.
On June 25, 2010, the Intermediate Court, for the third time, convicted both defendants and sentenced Zeng to death, and Chen to life imprisonment.
Upon the two defendants’ appeal, on August 23, 2011, the High Court vacated the conviction and remanded the case to the Intermediate Court for retrial on the grounds that “the trial violated the procedure law for the evidence used to convict the defendants was not present and examined in the trial court.”
On July 20, 2015, the Intermediate Court acquitted Zeng on the grounds of unclear facts and insufficient evidence, and convicted Chen and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Zeng was released on July 21, 2015.
The two defendants appealed again to the High Court, where Zeng requested the court to recognize his factual innocence.
On October 30, 2015, the High Court rejected the appeal and sustained Intermediate Court’s ruling.
Date of the conviction
September 10, 2004
Date the wrongful conviction was reversed
July 20, 2015
Days incarcerated
4,284
Why was the case reopened/reversed
Zeng kept appealing for his innocence. Zeng stated that since 2013, the changes in laws and policies had made the rectification possible.
Zeng’s legal aid lawyer Zhong Zhiyuan (“Zhong”) kept pushing for Zeng’s acquittal. In 2013, Zhong began to post the case online to attract media attention. He also wrote to the political-legal committee of Hunan Province to explain Zeng’s innocence.
Zeng’s brother, a law professor, kept writing petition letters to the SPC, the High Court, the political-legal committee of Hunan Province, and the standing committee of the Hunan People’s Congress.
After the Intermediate Court reheard the case on April 17, 2013, the case was adjourned twice for prosecutorial supplementary investigation.
While conducting their death penalty review process, SPC judges went to the crime scene to investigate and questioned Zeng. The judges at the High Court also conducted on-site investigations.
The political-legal committee of Hunan Province listed the case as the “No. 1 case of Hunan in 2014.”
Factors contributing to the wrongful conviction
False confession
Zeng started to recant his confessions in his first trial and claimed that he had been tortured by the police to confess. He stated that the police had beaten him and slapped his face until his mouth was bleeding.
Zeng claimed that when he was interrogated by the police for the first time, while knowing nothing about the murder, he was told by the police that he had strangled Zhou to death with a cord at the school of engineering and moved the victim’s body downstairs.
False witness testimony
Li originally testified five times that she had been with Zeng during the time the crime was committed. But she changed her deposition after being detained for thirteen days, during which she was intimidated, deceived, and coerced by the police to testify against Zeng. In a new statement, she said Zeng left for about 20 minutes.
After Li was released from her two-week detention, she recanted and said Zeng was with her the whole time. However, in May, 2004, Li was detained again before Zeng’s trial and was not allowed to testify during Zeng’s hearing. Two months after Zeng’s conviction, Li was convicted of perjury and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with two-year probation.
Problematic interpretation of forensic evidence
While investigators didn’t find any DNA proof on the cord allegedly used to kill Zhou, they claimed that they had found the fabric of the cord in Zeng’s pocket. The police also discovered Zeng’s shoe prints and fingerprints in the room where the victim was strangled to death. However, the forensic analysis only indicated that the fabric in Zeng’s pocket belonged to the same type of fabric found in the cord, it did not say it was a part of the cord. Zeng’s lawyer also pointed out that fingerprints and shoe prints could have been left there at any time before the crime since it was a public space for the engineering students and Zeng had been there multiple times to study.
Guilty presumption
The judge presiding over the first trial conceded that the principle of innocence until proven guilty had not been thoroughly implemented at that time. During a nationwide strike-hard campaign against crime in 2004, the overall policy for handling criminal cases was to reach a guilty verdict quickly as long as the basic facts were clear.
Other developments
In December 2015, Tan was awarded RMB 1.27 million by the Intermediate Court as state compensation.