On December 29, 2023, the Sichuan Provincial High People's Court held a retrial and pronounced the verdict in the case of Li Jin's robbery.
The court held that the facts ascertained in the original judgment were unclear and the evidence was insufficient, and the defendant Li Jin in the original trial could not be found guilty. Judgment: Revoke the (1999) Chuan Xing Zhong Zi No. 444 Criminal Ruling of the Sichuan Provincial High People's Court and the (1998) Cheng Tie Zhong Xing Chu Zi No. 44 Criminal Judgment of the Chengdu Railway Transport Intermediate Court
The defendant in the original trial, Li Jin, was not guilty.
This is a verdict that is 29 years late.
On September 27, 1995, Li Jin was inexplicably arrested from the street, and today he was found not guilty, deprived of his liberty for 21 years, 9 months and 10 days, and charged with the crime for 28 years and 3 months.
According to the judgment rendered by the Chengdu Railway Transport Intermediate Court in February 1997, the court ascertained after trial that:On April 13, 1994 (the day before the crime), Li Jin and fellow villagers Pu Fa Cheng and Pu Fa Neng met at the Yuanmou Railway Station and conspired to rob him. At around 15:30 on the same day, train 548 arrived at Yuanmou Station. The three of them followed the passengers Yao Moumou and Lin Moumou to the guest house of the Yuanmou Public Works Section. At about 1 a.m. the next day, the three men entered the guest house with crowbars and other tools of the crime through the door, and Li Jin kicked open the door of room 208, and the three of them hit two people with blunt and sharp objects, causing one of them to die on the spot and the other to die after rescue efforts failed.
After committing the crime, the three grabbed the luggage of the two and fled the scene.
According to the verdict, Li Jin confessed in detail how he met the Platts brothers and planned robbery, followed the victim, committed the robbery, the amount of property stolen, fled the scene, and discarded the tools of the crime.
The verdict also recorded Li Jin and Pu Fa Chengjun's identification of the crime scene, and Li Jin also identified the type of crime tools and the victim's handbag that was snatched, and there was ** in the file.
The Chengtie Intermediate People's Court held that the basic facts of the case were clear, and the basic evidence was credible and sufficient, so it sentenced Li Jin and Pu Fa Cheng to death, and sentenced Pu Fa Neng to death with a two-year reprieve, and carried out labor reform, so as to observe the after-effects.
Subsequently, the case began a 29-year tug-of-war.
According to China News Weekly, Li Jin provided a criminal complaint stating that the only direct evidence in this case was a confession of guilt, which was a false confession obtained by the investigating agency through torture and other illegal means.
Previous reports from Upstream News also showed that Pu Fa Cheng retracted his confession during the trial, saying that the guilty confession was the result of inducing and coercing confessions, and Pu Fa Neng did not admit to being involved in the entire judicial process.
"We were later acquitted, and we were able to plead not guilty to our insistence on pleading guilty. ”
After the Chengtie Intermediate People's Court rendered its verdict, all three appealed.
In March 1998, the Sichuan Provincial High People's Court ruled to revoke the judgment of the Chengtie Intermediate People's Court and remand for a new trial on the grounds that the facts were unclear and the evidence was insufficient.
Subsequently, the Chengtie Intermediate People's Court found the prosecution's charges of robbery against Li Jin, but the charges against the Platts brothers could not be sustained.
In the end, the court commuted the sentence to life imprisonment and the Platts brothers were not guilty.
After the Chengdu Railway Intermediate People's Court changed the verdict, the Chengdu Railway Transportation Branch of the Sichuan Provincial Procuratorate filed a protest, holding that the Chengdu Railway Intermediate People's Court's judgment had errors such as unclear facts, insufficient evidence, "guilty verdict and light sentence for serious crimes", wrong application of law, and illegal trial procedures.
Later, the Sichuan Provincial High Court found that there were many perpetrators in the case, but the "others" who committed the crime with Li Jin were not Platts Brothers. However, the Sichuan Provincial High Court also held that the original judgment found that Li Jin's main criminal facts and application of law were correct, that the sentence was appropriate, and that the trial procedures were lawful, and ruled on December 26, 2002 to reject the protest and uphold the judgment.
After the Platts brothers were acquitted, the Chengtie Intermediate People's Court issued a compensation decision in 2011, compensating the Platts brothers with a lump sum of more than 200,000 yuan.
Until July 7, 2017, Li Jin walked out of prison, and he underwent eight commutations during his sentence, and actually served his sentence of 14 years, 6 months and 12 days.
However, because Li Jin was taken into custody and examined by the railway police as early as September 27, 1995, his actual detention period was 21 years, 9 months and 10 days.
After Li Jin was released from prison, he immediately found a lawyer to appeal for him.
On June 11, 2020, the Sichuan Provincial High Court issued a Retrial Decision, deciding to initiate retrial procedures for Li Jin's robbery and homicide case. According to the Retrial Decision, the court held that Li Jin's appeal met the requirements of Article 253 (2) of the Criminal Procedure Law that a new trial should be made. Accordingly, in accordance with the provisions of Article 254, Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Procedure Law, it was decided that the court should separately form a collegial panel to conduct a retrial of this case.
It is worth mentioning that after Li Jin was imprisoned, he was transferred to three prisons to serve his sentence. "No matter what I'm serving in **, I haven't admitted that I killed someone. When Yuanmou's ** happened, I was working in Yingjiang, 700 kilometers away, how could I be at the scene of the crime?Li Jin, who was 54 years old at the time, told upstream news reporters.
The biggest suspicion in this case is that there is evidence to prove that Li Jin was not at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime.
Li Jin's lawyers, Yang Mingkuan and Zhang Gudui, found that at the time of the crime in 1994, Li Jin was working in Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province, and it was impossible for him to return to the scene of the Yuanmou crime, which was 700 kilometers awayThe only direct evidence for the conviction in the effective judgment was Li Jin's guilty confession, and there was no objective evidenceThe not-guilty verdict of the Platts brothers has made it a mystery who Li Jin's co-defendant is.
Li Jin told the upstream news reporter that on September 30, 1995, he was taken into custody and examined for being involved in this case, so he proposed to the railway ** case officer in charge of the investigation: When the case occurred on October 13, 1994, I was still working in Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province, and there was no time for returning to Yuanmou to commit the crime. ”
In addition, Li Jin also repeatedly reported to the investigators and procurators who were arraigned that he hoped to be verified in accordance with the law, but the case-handling personnel refused.
According to the report, Yang Mingkuan and Zhang Gudui found Li Jin's employer Fang Mou, made a record of his lawyer's questioning and submitted it to the Sichuan Provincial High Court as evidence for a retrial.
Fang said in the lawyer's interrogation record that Li Jin helped manage the sugarcane forest at Fang's house in Yingjiang County from the beginning of 1994 to June, and that in July 1994, when the local Husonghe Power Station was being built, Li Jin was arranged to help build the house until the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 20, 1994. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, Fang took Li Jin and other workers to the Hongpo River on the China-Myanmar border to carry the cut timber, and returned to Yingjiang after working for more than 20 days.
Li Jin did not leave Yingjiang until the end of the ninth lunar month of that year and returned to Yuanmou. And Yuanmou** happened on April 14, 1994.
On December 29, after the acquittal verdict was issued, "Fadu Law" held a dialogue with Li Jin.
Law: Congratulations, you finally got a not guilty verdict!
Li Jin:Thank you!It's been almost 30 years before I waited for the verdict, and I was very excited and up.
I can't make any sense, but I just feel that the acquittal came too late.
LAW: What is the current situation?What are your thoughts on applying for state compensation?
Li Jin:: I am now a "five-guarantee household", a person. As a result of this case, our brothers and sisters have never interacted with each other for decades, and there is no affection.
Because I was in prison, I didn't grow up with my brothers and sisters, and I don't even have any impression of what they look like.
As for state compensation, I have indeed discussed with the lawyer, but there is no specific discussion yet, and the lawyer is also busy, and I am too tired.
In the past 30 years, I have been tired because of this lawsuit, and I feel that I am too tired and a little stumbling.
I really want to rest now, let myself relax and go out to travel and see the scenery.
LAW: How have you spent the past few years since you were released from prison?How's your body doing now?
Li Jin:In the past few years, I have been working in my hometown, earning more than 100 yuan a day. The main work is to make color steel tiles. To be honest, it's hard, but there's no way, I have to survive, and I have to fight a lawsuit.
Because of his age and lack of skills, it is difficult to find a suitable job. Unless it's this kind of hard work, the boss knows that my situation is okay for me.
The main thing is that he is not in good health and has kidney stones. In other ways, because he had been tortured to extract confessions, his hands felt pain when the weather changed.
During the interrogation that year, he was beaten too hard, and he may have been left with symptoms because of this.
Fadu Law: The lawsuit has lasted so long, how did you hold on?Did you think about giving up in between?
Li Jin:I am really grateful for the concern and attention of people from all walks of life for this case.
The appeal process was so difficult that I felt very sad to think about.
On June 11, 2020, it received a retrial from the Sichuan High Court, and then the epidemic and many other reasons were delayed again and again, and it was delayed until 2023.
In the past few years of appeals, if it were not for the help of ** and people from all walks of life, it would have been almost impossible to win.
The middle prosecutor said to me: You can't look for ** reports anymore.
I told him, there is no ** report, can the three of us win with me and the lawyer alone?Will you redress me?He didn't speak.
Therefore, I am very grateful to ** and people from all walks of life for their attention and concern for my case, I bow deeply to them, thank you!
It is worth mentioning that Upstream News, which was the first to report on the case and has been following up on the report, also conducted an exclusive interview with Li Jin.
During the conversation, Li Jin said:
I am very happy with this result, and I cannot describe the feeling at this time.
He was imprisoned for 21 years, 9 months and 10 days, and his good youth was wasted. If it weren't for this, maybe I would have gotten married and had children, my children would have been admitted to college, and I might even have held my grandchildren, but now I am alone.
This not-guilty verdict demonstrates the responsibility of the Sichuan Provincial High Court and reflects the progress of China's rule of law.
Li Jin also told Upstream News that he had not retracted his confession because he was afraid of staying in the detention center.
He said that his sentence in prison was reduced eight times, a reduction of more than seven years. In prison, he made up his mind that as long as he did not die, he would definitely find a lawyer to appeal after he was released from prison.
Li Jin also said that he hoped to hold the case-handling personnel accountable, and it was they who had to admit that he had killed people and implicated the two brothers, Pu Fa Cheng and Pu Fon Neng, which led to the tragedy of the three people's lives.