Innocent man freed after 23 years in jail
Print Edition
CHEN Man, China’s longest-serving wrongfully convicted prisoner, was set free yesterday after 23 years behind bars for arson and murder.
In December 1992, police said the man, then 30, had at first denied killing Zhong Zuokuan, his former landlord, and setting his house on fire but later confessed.
However, at his trial he retracted his confession.
The Higher People’s Court of east China’s Zhejiang Province said yesterday that, apart from that confession, which it deemed “dubious,” there was no evidence to link Chen with the crime. His description of the crime didn’t match the facts, it said.
Chen left Meilan Prison in Haikou, a city in China’s southern Hainan Province, yesterday morning. He boarded a flight to southwest China’s Sichuan Province last night and was due in the provincial capital of Chengdu around midnight on his way to his hometown, according to a Chengdu newspaper.
Chen told the Legal Evening News he wants to open his own business. “I haven’t thought about it in detail. I just want to earn money and repay those who have helped me,” he said.
He also said he would be seeking compensation for the time he spent in jail.
Chen went to Hainan in 1988 and opened a construction company there in 1992, the newspaper reported.
Court papers showed he was apprehended on December 27, 1992, on suspicion of arson and murder two days before.
In November 1994, the Haikou Intermediate People’s Court said Chen had owed rent and that Zhong was threatening to report him over allegations of faking an official stamp. An argument ended in Chen stabbing Zhong to death and setting a gas cylinder alight, the court said.
Chen was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve. Haikou prosecutors thought that too lenient but the Hainan Provincial Higher People’s Court upheld the original verdict.
Chen, however, continued to insist on his innocence and lodged an appeal with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, which in turn lodged a protest with the Supreme People’s Court in February last year.
Two months later, the top court ordered Zhejiang’s higher court to review the case.
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