On April 22, 1998, a murder occurred on Yuantong North Road in Kunming, Yunnan Province.
A van was parked at the scene of the murder, and a man and a woman in disheveled clothes were shot dead.
In 1999, the deceased's husband, Du Peiwu, an anti-narcotics policeman, was accused of being the murderer of the two and was sentenced to death after a court trial.
A year later, the police arrested a criminal group that killed 19 people in a row based on a missing case, but the group of criminals confessed that they were the real murderers of the two people that year.
So why did the court decide that Du Peiwu was the murderer, and what did Du Peiwu go through?
Arrested at the time of the crime
On the evening of April 20, 1998, Du Peiwu called his wife Wang Xiaoxiang, but he was not connected, and the more he thought about it, the more worried he became.
Wang Xiaoxiang is his college classmate and a police officer of the Communications Department of the Kunming Public Security Bureau.
Early the next morning, he contacted his wife's workplace, father-in-law and mother-in-law to inquire about his wife's situation, and even asked the traffic bureau if there had been a traffic accident involving women recently, but there was no clue, so he called the police.
By the morning of the 22nd, his wife was still not heard from, and Du Peiwu intuitively felt that something might have happened to his wife.
On the afternoon of the 22nd, the police found him, and he thought that his wife had found him, but he didn't expect that as soon as they came up, they held him down and searched his body.
Even though Du Peiwu asked the reason, the policemen remained silent.
Subsequently, he was taken to the office of the criminal investigation detachment of the Kunming Public Security Bureau, where he sat in silence until 5 p.m., and then handed over to the task force.
In the interrogation room, Du Peiwu looked dazed.
"Do you know where your wife is?"
The question of the case-handling personnel made Du Peiwu frown, if he knew, why did he call the police? Du Peiwu shook his head.
"She's dead. ”
Du Peiwu was in a trance whether he had auditory hallucinations just now, and the next words of the case-handling staff proved that he didn't.
The police found a murder on Yuantong North Road, the deceased were all policemen, one was his wife, and the other was his friend Wang Junbo, and the forensic examination of the death time was around 8 pm on the 20th.
The police suspect that he killed the man for two reasons.
First of all, he had a motive for committing the crime.
The two of them were undressed at the scene, Wang Xiaoxiang should be cheating with Wang Junbo, and Du Peiwu, as Wang Xiaoxiang's husband, retaliated and killed.
Secondly, he has the conditions to commit the crime.
The gunshot wounds suffered by the two were all from the "77 type" worn by Wang Junbo, and no guns could be found at the scene, so the murderer should have taken the gun from Wang Junbo and shot at the two, and then fled the scene with the gun.
Only after professional training can you judge and act so neatly, so the murderer has either been a policeman, a soldier, or a vicious gangster.
Regarding the reasons given by the police, Du Peiwu said that he did not know that his wife was cheating, and that he had been working in the drug rehabilitation center on the 20th, returning to the dormitory at 8 o'clock in the evening, coming out at 9 o'clock in the evening to pick up water and meeting his colleague Huang Jianzhong, and there was no time to commit the crime at all.
Torture to extract confessions
The police did not believe his side of the story and placed him in detention. According to the regulations, the retention time did not exceed 12 hours, but Du Peiwu was detained for 10 days.
During the 10 days of detention, the task force did not make any real progress, so Du Peiwu was sent to a drug rehabilitation center and detained.
As a suspect, Du Peiwu has suspicions, but there is no direct evidence, so what should I do?
On the morning of June 30, Du Peiwu took a lie detector test.
The polygraph records and analyzes the physiological reactions of the person being tested when answering questions, such as changes in breathing, heart rate, etc., to determine whether he is lying, and the test shows that Du Peiwu lies on some questions.
Lie detector test results are for reference only, not as evidence.
However, the investigators believed that Du Peiwu was the murderer, and he did not admit his guilt, so they took some measures to make him admit his guilt.
From June 30 to July 19, Du Peiwu was subjected to a series of high-intensity interrogations, such as turning on bright lights to prevent him from sleeping.
In the end, Du Peiwu could not bear the psychological and physical pressure, admitted that he had killed someone, and "confessed" a whole set of circumstances of murder by cheating a gun.
He said that he disposed of the gun in front of the Yinhe Restaurant in Kunming, which was about 1 kilometer away from the dumping site.
However, the lawyer's on-the-spot investigation learned that there was no trash can at Galaxy Restaurant at the time of the incident, and the police did not find a pistol there.
After Du Peiwu "confessed," he was sent to the Kunming City No. 1 Detention Center to be detained, and he privately inquired about the situation with the detainees and learned that the police here would not beat anyone.
On July 28, Du Peiwu submitted an "Indictment of Extorting Confessions by Torture" to the procurator stationed in the office and the municipal procuratorate, and the next day, the procurator in the station examined Du Peiwu's injuries and took photographs.
Hearings
On December 17, 1998, the Kunming Intermediate People's Court held a trial of the "Du Peiwu Intentional Homicide Case".
The prosecutor of the procuratorate asserted that Du Peiwu deliberately killed his wife Wang Xiaoxiang and Wang Junbo in revenge for their improper sexual relationship.
To make the evidence convincing, they provided an inquest report by 11 forensic technical experts at the level of engineers.
"At the cuffs of the defendant Du Peiwu's shirt, the remains of the firearm shooting were detected. The prosecutor took the report and said, "It shows that he used to shoot with a firearm while wearing this shirt." ”
Du Peiwu's lawyer argued:
In addition, if Du Peiwu thought of discarding the pistol, as well as the phone and other items that the two of them carried with him, why not discard the clothes that left the shooting residue together? ”
Du Peiwu's defender refuted the evidence provided by the prosecutor one by one.
The key to this is Du Peiwu's guilty confession.
In the four confessions of guilt provided by the prosecutor, Du Peiwu's statements of the same crime were inconsistent and contradictory.
Confessions of guilt such as key information such as the means of killing, the time, the place, and the place where the tools of the crime were abandoned are generally inadmissible.
During this period, they demanded that the procuratorate produce a photograph taken by the resident prosecutor of Du Peiwu on July 20 to prove that the four guilty indictments were obtained under the condition that Du Peiwu was tortured to extract confessions.
The prosecutor responded that "it was not found" and said that it was necessary to adjourn the trial to supplement the collection of evidence, so the trial was adjourned in the first instance.
On 15 January 1999, the case was reopened.
Du Peiwu insisted on proving that he had been tortured to extract a confession.
It was winter, and he was wearing loose clothes, so he quietly hid a piece of clothing that had been torn during torture around his waist and brought it into the courtroom.
When the prosecutor still refused to provide the photo, he pulled out his clothes and showed them in public, "Presiding Judge, this is the clothes I was wearing at that time!"
The presiding judge asked the bailiff to put away his clothes and said, "Don't dwell on these questions anymore. ”
"I really didn't kill anyone! Why don't you believe me!"
"If you don't kill someone, show evidence!"
In the end, the judge held that the arguments of Du Peiwu and his lawyer were pure quibbles and should be refuted.
On 5 February 1999, the Kunming Intermediate People's Court sentenced Du Peiwu to death and deprived him of his political rights for life for intentional homicide.
Out of survival instinct, Du Peiwu appealed to the Yunnan Provincial High People's Court.
On 20 October 1999, the Yunnan Provincial High People's Court found that Du Peiwu's defender's opinion had been adopted, and commuted the sentence to Du Peiwu's death sentence with a suspended death sentence and deprivation of political rights for life.
On 8 December 1999, Du Peiwu was sent to Yunnan Provincial No. 1 Prison, where felons are held.
Faced with the betrayal and death of his wife, torture, lengthy detention, and weak court defenses, Du Peiwu was so tired that he gave up hope of survival and left a suicide note for his family.
While waiting for the "countdown to death", the only thing he couldn't let go of was his son, who became an orphan after he was executed.
In order to leave a little survival capital for his son, Du Peiwu is ready to sell his organs to make money.
Just as he was pondering which organs to sell, things took a turn for the worse.
Grievances
In April 2000, the police arrested a suspect in a missing case who confessed to an underworld organization headed by Yang Tianyong.
Yang Tianyong was originally a police officer at the East Station Police Station of the Kunming Railway Public Security Bureau, but was dismissed because he disobeyed the unit's order.
After being dismissed, Yang Tianyong became resentful, went to the opposite side of the police and the people, gathered a group of outlaws, and formed an underworld criminal gang.
With the arrest of Yang Tianyong and others, the conclusion that "Du Peiwu intentionally killed people" has been completely overturned.
From April 1997 to May 2000, the underworld criminal gang headed by Yang Tianyong killed a total of 19 people, two of whom were Wang Xiaoxiang and Wang Junbo.
At 8 p.m. on April 20, 1998, Yang Tianyong and three others, dressed in police uniforms, were wandering along Yuantong North Road in Kunming City when they saw a van parked on the side of the road and wanted to rob it.
When he went up and knocked on the door, he found a man and a woman fornicating, so he claimed to be an anti-narcotics police officer and asked them to get out of the car for inspection.
Wang Xiaoxiang hurriedly said: "We are also from the Public Security Bureau. ”
Seeing that she was not cooperative, Yang Tianyong pointed a "May Fourth" pistol at them, "Hand over your weapons!"
Wang Junbo had no choice, handed over the "Type 77" pistol he was carrying, and prepared to get out of the car.
At this time, Wang Xiaoxiang insisted on checking their police cards before getting out of the car.
This moment angered Yang Tianyong, he snatched the "Type 77" pistol and quickly aimed it at the two people, one for each person.
The three robbed the two of them of their belongings, closed the car door, and drove away.
Yang Tianyong recalled his thoughts at the time: "Anyway, I have killed one policeman, and it makes no difference if I kill two more." ”
Subsequently, the police found Wang Junbo with a gun from Yang Tianyong's residence, and the key physical evidence that had not been found was now dazzlingly displayed in front of him.
On July 11, 2007, the Yunnan Provincial High People's Court issued a retrial verdict, acquitting Du Peiwu and releasing him on the spot.
In court, Du Peiwu repeatedly asked for the release of the scar photos, which had been ignored by the procuratorate, were finally used as evidence in court.
In addition, after forensic evaluation, torture caused Du Peiwu's brain to atrophy.
As a result, Qin Bolian, former political commissar of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the Kunming City Public Security Bureau, was sentenced to one year in prison with a one-year probation, and Ning Xinghua, the captain of the team, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison with a two-year probation.
Du Peiwu's position and party membership were restored, and he received 20,000 yuan in state compensation, but from a police officer to a death row prisoner, and from a death row prisoner to a police officer, his state of mind should have changed a lot.
This is an unjust, false and wrongly decided case that has attracted considerable attention since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Analyzing the entire process reveals that:
The people's police of the special case group preset their stance and extorted confessions by torture; the procuratorate turned a blind eye to extorting confessions by torture; and the court demanded that the defendant present evidence that there was no homicide, violating the principle of "whoever asserts the claim shall present evidence" in criminal cases.
The public security, the procuratorate, and the courts were supposed to supervise at all levels to ensure the fairness of law enforcement, but in the Du Peiwu case, these three checkpoints all lost their function of upholding justice and dispelling evil.
Only by learning lessons and upholding the rule of law can we prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
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