What’s new: The Tianjin High People’s Court has exonerated a man who served 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, after overturning his conviction due to insufficient evidence at a retrial on Thursday.
Yang Songfa, who had long appealed for his case to be revisited, insisting that he did not murder his girlfriend Liu Caiju in March 2001, has been released and will be reunited with family after a 14-day precautionary quarantine for coronavirus.
Yang’s son told Caixin that his father will apply for state compensation for wrongful imprisonment.
Why it matters: Yang’s retrial and subsequent exoneration is the latest in a string of instances of lengthy wrongful imprisonments in China due to miscarriages of justice.
In the eastern province of Jiangxi in August, a local court exonerated a convicted man, Zhang Yuhuan, who had been behind bars for 27 years, the longest wrongful imprisonment in China.
In November, the high court in Central China’s Henan province decided to conduct a retrial of a murder case that led to the imprisonment of a now 49-year-old man for 22 years.
Contact reporter Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com) and editor Heather Mowbray (heathermowbray@caixin.com)
