New doubts have emerged in Zhang Zhichao's case, and the review of the wrong case cannot let go of every detail

Zhang Zhichao's case has made waves again. A few days ago, Zhang Zhichao, who has attracted much public attention and "changed his verdict to innocence after 15 years of detention," filed a case with the Shandong Linyi Intermediate Court for 7.89 million yuan in state compensation, not only that, the lawyer representing the case revealed in an interview with Nandu that the signature and handprint on the record of the 2006 judgment of the case were in doubt, and Zhang Zhichao and his co-defendant Wang Guangchao both said that the signature on the judgment record was not signed by himself.

Of course, compared with the previous old cases that have been completely overturned after judicial retrial, including state compensation or possible responsibility for wrongful cases, there has been little more attention to the follow-up progress of cases such as state compensation or possible wrongful case responsibility, and the specific amount of application for state compensation may have become one of the elements of many public distinctions between different wrongful cases. The difference is that this time Zhang Zhichao's case has returned to the public eye, and a suspicious detail in the process of his wrongful case has been recalled.

In the process of applying for state compensation, an ordinary case file document attracted the attention of the lawyer, the signature and handprint on the judgment document were in doubt, and the parties and co-defendants denied the authenticity of the signature, especially Wang Guangchao, a co-defendant who was sentenced to a suspended sentence at that time, also said that the time when the judgment record was paid, he was not at the place of signing as shown in the document, and the lawyer said that he would consider applying for handwriting appraisal. The case has been "closed", a court judgment that has been corrected, and whether the signature on the judgment document was done by himself, although it does not involve specific confessions about the details of the case during the investigation of the case, it is not "trivial".

On January 13, 2020, after the verdict was pronounced, Zhang Zhichao and his mother walked out of the court. Profile picture

In the Requirements of the Criminal Procedure Law on the Sentencing Procedure, it is clear that "the declaration of the judgment shall be carried out in public", and even if the judgment cannot be pronounced in court, it is also required to "immediately serve the judgment to the parties" after the declaration. Leaving aside whether the delivery of the March 6 judgment after a gap of more than half a month met the "immediate" requirements of the Criminal Procedure Law, after all, the Criminal Procedure Law does not explicitly restrict this, and only gives a statutory time limit of five days for the judgment to be pronounced in court. The time limit requirement of the law for the right of appeal of the citizens concerned is also calculated from the date of receipt of the judgment document, and it seems that this service that is not called "timely" does not materially affect the legitimate litigation rights and interests of the parties.

However, it is worth noting that the content of the judgment declaration clearly mentions key issues such as whether the parties appeal, because the authenticity of the signature is now in doubt, and objectively speaking, whether the parties' right to appeal at that time was effectively guaranteed also questions. Of course, the Criminal Procedure Law also clarifies that the time limit for a party to appeal against the judgment is ten days, and in theory, even if it expresses "no appeal" when receiving the judgment and hearing the judgment and recording it in the case, it also has the right to exercise the statutory right of appeal within the statutory time limit.

However, as a minor at the time of the crime, whether Zhang Zhichao fulfilled the necessary sentencing procedures for him and clearly informed him of the statutory principle of "no increase in sentence on appeal" may directly determine whether the legitimate rights and interests of the parties have been effectively protected. Media reports show that after the March 2006 verdict, it was not until 2011 that Zhang Zhichao, who had been silent for five years, suddenly began to cry out for justice. Facts have shown that the case of Zhang Zhichao, who signed at that time and said that he would not appeal, did terminate the case at the first instance for a time, without the opportunity for the specific judiciary to consider the case again, until the long appeal many years later.

Although the case was eventually retried and changed by the SPC, exhausting the existing procedures as much as possible in the trial of the case is still the responsible attitude that should be taken at the institutional level towards the case. Whether the "no appeal" at that time was intentional, whether the parties' right to appeal and the right to know of "no sentence on appeal" were effectively guaranteed, what was the misplaced role of the parties to the investigation and prosecution at that time in the process of handling the wrong case that had been corrected at that moment, and whether there was a situation in which the parties were materially blurred or even deprived of the right to appeal to evade the continuation of the trial of the case, should also be an issue that must be clarified after the correction of the wrongful case.

History cannot be assumed, but wrongful cases must be reviewed repeatedly, even in every tiny detail of the ins and outs of wrongful cases. The correction of unjust cases is never the end, and it is never even a follow-up to the state compensation. The review of wrongful cases cannot be ignored in every detail, which is also of institutional value for the pursuit of judicial responsibility in specific cases and the meticulousness and rigor of the overall judicial process. The lives of the parties who have returned from unjust cases will continue; the specific judiciary after the correction of unjust cases needs to learn lessons through repeated deduction of the details of wrongful cases to ensure that every citizen's future life has legal protection.