Hello everyone, this article is by teacher Li Meng (the promoter of Zhang Zhichao's case rehabilitation) from his perspective to tell the story behind Zhang Zhichao's case. The article is long, with more than 28,000 words written and many people mentioned. I would have suggested that he be more streamlined, but he said that every name that had given help in the case should appear in this article. This article should be the most complete record of the rehabilitation process in this case, and I hope that everyone will understand and remember the efforts of these people, and I hope that such unjust cases will not happen again.
The story behind Zhang Zhichao's rehabilitation
On the morning of January 13, 2020, the Shandong Provincial High People's Court held a hearing at the Zibo Intermediate People's Court and acquitted Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao.
At 9:35, Zhang Zhichao walked out of the back door of the court building and hugged me tightly.
That was the first time I met Zhang Zhichao. The first time we met, before we could say a word, we hugged each other tightly, like relatives who had been reunited for a long time. Surrounded by media colleagues from all over the country, there were thirty or forty people, and the shutter sound of "clicking and clicking" could be heard in their ears.
After the hug, I patted him on the shoulder and said, "You're free!" You're free! ”
Zhang Zhichao looked up at the sky and took a deep breath of fresh air.
"The sky outside is so big, the sky in prison is only so small, it will always be so small."
It feels so good to be free!
Back at the hotel that day, cover reporter Dai Rui and Red Star News reporter Zhang Yanliang asked me, "Teacher Li, are you excited?" I said, "No, I feel calmer." ”
Indeed, the three days that greeted Zhang Zhichao's release from Zibo to his return to Linshu, my mood was generally relatively calm. Because he had already foreseen that he would be acquitted, that feeling of surprise no longer existed; also because there were too many reporters who came to interview, and there were many local people in Zibo who had come to see him, and they had been receiving and coordinating arrangements, and a lot of transactional work had also erased that surprise.
More importantly, this case dragged on for another two or three years from the retrial to the final sentencing, dragging everyone physically and mentally exhausted, and really waiting for the acquittal result to come out, it was no longer an excitement and surprise, but a heavy relief, as if a stone in the heart had been removed, feeling unprecedented ease.
Since 2015, when I began to investigate and report on the Zhang Zhichao case, this stone has always been pressed on my heart, and I have said to many people that the Zhang Zhichao case is the heaviest stone in my heart. Now, the big rock has finally been removed, and I am free.
(Mr. Wang Chaoyong, Mr. Wang Guangchao, Mr. Liu Zhimin, Mr. Wang Dianxue, Mr. Zhang Zhichao, Mr. Li Xun, Mr. Zhang Zhichao's mother)
Two or three days after I returned to Beijing from Linshu, the excitement and joy gradually came to my heart, and it continued like a tidal wave. A person lies quietly in the dou room, thinking about the people and things that have revolved around Zhang Zhichao's case in the past 5 years, warmth gradually occupies the atrium, but there is still some sadness. Many times I dreamed back in the middle of the night and found that I had tears in the corners of my eyes. I realized that the rehabilitation of Zhang Zhichao's case should be the peak of my life, and it is estimated that there will be no more peaks beyond it in the future.
"Fifty and know the destiny of heaven", Confucius said, God let you come to the world for a while, let you do a lot of things, how big a movement you make, by the time you are fifty years old, you should know it yourself.
"It turns out that God gave birth to the world to let me rehabilitate several unjust cases."
Those days, with excitement and joy, this sentence always lingered in the ears.
The 15-year-old was charged with rape and spent 15 years in prison
On January 10, 2005, Gao Ting (pseudonym), a first-year high school girl at Linshu County No. 2 Middle School in Shandong Province, disappeared. A month later, her body was found in an abandoned washroom on the third floor of the school's school building. After several days of investigation, the Linshu County Public Security Bureau focused its suspicions on Zhang Zhichao, a high school student who was not yet 16 years old at the school, and identified him as the perpetrator of the rape and murder of Gao Ting.
Zhang Zhichao's home is a two-story building, the first floor is a façade to sell goods, he sleeps downstairs, his parents sleep upstairs. On February 12, 2005, the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, Zhang Zhichao was sleeping at home at night. At 1 a.m., the phone rang suddenly. The mother came down to answer the phone, and then opened the door, and the interpol team rushed in, called Zhang Zhichao out of bed, and without saying anything, took him away.
After being brought to the criminal police team, after about ten minutes, someone took off Zhang Zhichao's shirt. The policeman asked, "Do you know why we're looking for you?" "He said he didn't know, so he was beaten. Let him confess to the crime before telling him what happened to the school.
Zhang Zhichao did not know Gao Ting and had never met. After she disappeared, the whole county of Linshu was spreading the news, and the public security bureau searched the school, and he knew it. After being arrested, he learned from the police that Gao Ting's body had been found.
The police forced him to confess before asking for the details of the crime. If you can't say it, prompt, hint, and then let him repeat it as they say it, and they will record it again. Zhang Zhichao said he was tortured.
Zhang Zhichao's mother, Ma Yuping, once went to the public security bureau, heard her son's screams, followed the sound into the interrogation room, and saw that her son was beaten very painfully, but the police immediately drove her out.
The police told Zhang Zhichao that there was no need to worry, minors would not be sentenced to death. Zhang Zhichao thought at that time, since they all said so, no matter how much they didn't admit it, no one would be able to help him, and he really couldn't stand that kind of torture.
After Zhang Zhichao was forced to confess guilt and enter the detention center, he retracted his confession to the procurator sent by the procuratorate for interrogation, and after retracting the confession, he was taken to the criminal police brigade, re-interrogated, and then tortured. The police told him that if they tried to argue again, they would still interrogate him, and when he heard these words, Zhang Zhichao was completely desperate.
Later, when the first instance trial began, Zhang Zhichao's family could not enter the courtroom at all. Gao Ting's family surrounded the courtroom, and If Zhang Zhichao's parents approached, they would be insulted or even beaten, and they would not be able to enter the courtroom.
Zhang Zhichao looked around the auditorium, couldn't see any relatives, and his heart was completely cold. Think about being beaten after retracting a confession to the procurator in the detention center, and he did not dare to retract his confession in court, asking everything "yes." In his consciousness at that time, judges, prosecutors, and policemen were all in the same group, and it was useless for him not to admit it.
There is also a classmate Wang Guangchao, who was identified by the police as harboring Zhang Zhichao, and also admitted guilt in court. Wang Guangchao was also beaten into a confession, and the lawyer hired by his family for him came, and he told the lawyer that he was wronged, but the lawyer instead advised him that as long as he confessed guilt, he could be sentenced to a suspended sentence and would soon be able to go out.
Hearing this, he asked his fellow inmates to go out and go to his parents and ask them to go to Beijing to help him get a barrister, a lawyer who could really defend him. The cellmate lived up to his promise and went to his house after leaving the detention center and relayed his words to his parents. However, the parents still entrusted the lawyer they had hired earlier to meet at the detention center and once again persuaded Wang Guangchao to confess guilt. Wang Guangchao tearfully agreed to confess his guilt.
In March 2006, Zhang Zhichao was sentenced to life imprisonment for rape by the Linyi Intermediate People's Court. His classmate Wang Guangchao was found to have harbored Zhang Zhichao and sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for three years.
The family was destroyed and the people died frequently, and five years later, the truth was revealed
After being sentenced to life imprisonment, Zhang Zhichao was held in the Zibo Juvenile Correctional Center. In the first few years of the juvenile detention center, Zhang Zhichao basically did not talk to others and remained silent. He was afraid that telling the truth would affect his family again, and he was afraid of being brought back to Linshu again. Rapists are discriminated against by other prisoners in prison, and Zhang Zhichao has suffered countless humiliations and tortures, but he can only endure.
Later, Zhang Zhichao slowly studied law, felt that the current environment may be better than before, felt that not everyone was like those who interrogated him, or there would be people who advocated fairness and justice, and he gradually had the idea of appealing.
He also made some good friends in prison. A cellmate suddenly asked him one day, "Did you do that?" I don't think it's like that. You are so honest, do you dare to rape and kill people, and do you dare to rape corpses? Zhang Zhichao replied without hesitation, "It is true that I did not do that." ”
After learning the truth, the inmate said: "If you didn't do it, you must say it. In the future, even if you go out, how to be a person? ”
It feels very painful to tell the truth! "Finally someone believed that I didn't do it!" Zhang Zhichao became extremely excited, and he planned to confide the truth to more people.
In the spring of 2011, before telling his mother the truth, he wrote a document of more than a dozen pages and handed it over to the prison prosecutor, with little repercussions.
It wasn't until the summer that he told his mother the truth, and he felt more relaxed than ever. He knew that there was no hope for the appeal, and he was afraid that his mother would be too tired and too hard, and he thought about waiting for the release of his sentence to appeal himself...
Zhang Zhichao did not dare to tell the truth for five years, and was criticized by many people, questioning why he did not tell the truth for five years if he was not the real murderer. Wang Guangchao said he could fully understand Zhang Zhichao. Released that year, he could only move around Linshu during his probation. There is a small restaurant in front of the house, and often some uniformed people come to the hotel to eat, and as soon as he sees them, Wang Guangchao will involuntarily tremble and shiver, and his face will become miserable.
The psychological shadow caused by the torture of minors is many times greater than that of adults, zhang zhichao, and wang guangchao.
In the past few years that Zhang Zhichao was imprisoned and serving his sentence, great changes have taken place in his family. Zhang Zhichao's grandfather, shortly after Zhang Zhichao was arrested, fell ill and died soon after. Zhang Zhichao's father originally had a chronic disease, because Zhang Zhichao was sentenced to life imprisonment, his body and mind were severely hit, he was bedridden, and a few years later, he also died.
After Zhang Zhichao told his mother that he had not raped and killed, Ma Yuping returned home and has been in a trance. Zhang Zhichao's grandmother saw that her daughter was absent-minded all day and asked her what was wrong. Ma Yuping did not hold back for a moment, and then told her, "Chao told me that things are not super-done, he is wronged." ”
Hearing this, Zhang Zhichao's grandmother fell ill at once. In the past few years, every time Ma Yuping came back from visiting her son from the juvenile detention center, Grandma would always ask, how is Chao inside, is he thin, when can he come out, can I still see him. This time, hearing the answer to one of the most important questions he had guessed for years, his spirit suddenly collapsed. After more than half a month, my grandmother, who had always been relatively hard in body, also passed away with hatred. Before she died, her eyes were open and never closed.
The Aid Program for the Wronged was launched, and I first learned about Zhang Zhichao's case
After completing her grandmother's affairs, Ma Yuping began to appeal for Zhang Zhichao. The first to entrust an agent to appeal were two Shandong lawyers, Duan Zhigang and Qi Yongyong, who I had never contacted, let alone met. But I'm looking forward to it, and I hope they can recall the initial reception of Ma Yuping.
These two lawyers successfully retrieved and copied most of the files of Zhang Zhichao's case from the Linyi Intermediate Court, and made their own contributions to the eventual rehabilitation of Zhang Zhichao's case. After carefully reviewing all the files and materials of Zhang Zhichao's case and meeting with Zhang Zhichao, they unanimously believed that this was an unjust case.
With the help of lawyers, Zhang Zhichao entrusted his mother Ma Yuping to file a complaint with the Linyi Intermediate People's Court and the Shandong Provincial High People's Court.
On March 19, 2012, the Linyi Intermediate People's Court rejected Zhang Zhichao's complaint without specifying specific reasons.
On November 12, 2012, the Shandong Higher People's Court rejected Zhang Zhichao's complaint on the grounds that: "There is no evidence to prove that the complainant Zhang Zhichao's confession made by the public security organ was obtained by torture, and zhang Zhichao's multiple confessions after his return to the case were signed and fingerprinted by teachers, which can fully protect Zhang Zhichao's various procedural rights. ”
Before rejecting the appeal, the judge of the Shandong Higher People's Court went to Linshu to investigate and met with Xu Jian, the class teacher at the time of Zhang Zhichao's case. Xu Jian truthfully told the judge that the police interrogated Zhang Zhichao when he was not present, and the signature belonged to the supplementary signature on Zhang Zhichao's interrogation record afterwards.
However, the Shandong Higher People's Court rejected the complaint on the grounds that because there was a teacher present during the interrogation, Zhang Zhichao's rights as a minor at that time could be fully protected.
And Ma Yuping told me that a judge who received her said to her, "There should be something wrong with your son's case, but that's all there is to it." Ma Yuping asked, you have only read the verdict, why do you think there is a problem? The judge smiled bitterly, there is no evidence. Ma Yuping asked, why can it only be like this, what does it mean? The judge laughed and did not answer.
Later, Ma Yuping said to the judge of the Shandong Higher People's Court, if you can't handle it, can you reject my complaint, and then I will appeal to the Supreme People's Court. The Shandong High Court later rejected it.
After 2012, Ma Yuping came to Beijing and found Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, which took over the case. During the appeal represented by Beijing Shangquan, lawyers Li Changqing, Chen Hongyu, and Zhang Yu searched for new evidence for Zhang Zhichao's case, and chen Hongyu and Zhang Yu went to Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, to meet with Wang Guangchao, co-defendant in Zhang Zhichao's case, and made a record.
Wang Guangchao told the two lawyers that his confession was formed by torture, he did not shield Zhang Zhichao, and whether Zhang Zhichao committed the crime was unknown to him, and he had never seen or did not know the victim Gao Ting.
Before, Wang Guangchao had always thought that Zhang Zhichao had really raped and killed people, and only he was wronged. After the two lawyers found him, he began to believe that Zhang Zhichao was also wronged.
Wang Guangchao was already married and had children at that time, working in Ningbo, Zhejiang, and his wife and children were in Linshu. Ma Yuping initially found Wang Guangchao's wife, who at first refused to receive Ma Yuping and looked at her coldly. Ma Yuping later went to look for her again and again, and Wang Guangchao's family was touched, accepted her, and promised to tell the truth.
At that time, Shang Quan Institute jointly launched the "Aid Program for the Wronged" project with the Criminal Legal Aid Research Center of the China University of Political Science and Law. This is a public welfare project jointly initiated by the Criminal Legal Aid Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law and Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, aiming to provide legal aid to those who have been wronged and urge the judicial authorities to correct major unjust, false and wrong cases.
On May 23, 2014, the scheme was officially launched at Beijing Shangquan Law Firm and announced the first five cases of assistance, namely the intentional homicide of Li Jinlian in Jiangxi, the kidnapping and murder of Chen Xiaying in Fuzhou, the robbery and murder of Xu Jinlong in Putian, Fujian, the intentional homicide of Fan Maozhu in Wenzhou, and the rape of Zhang Zhichao in Linshu, Shandong.
In the years that followed, four of the five cases had been rehabilitated, and the only one left unhabilitated was the Wenzhou Fan Maozhu intentional homicide case.
On May 23, 2014, when Shang Quan's "Aid to the Wronged" project was launched, I was also involved in numerous media interviews. When I reported on the "Aid Program for the Wronged", I learned about Zhang Zhichao's case. However, the specific facts of Zhang Zhichao's case were not disclosed at the time, and the media did not know about the specific facts of the case.
In July 2014, the 20th issue of the Magazine of Democracy and the Rule of Law of the China Law Society, where I worked, mentioned Zhang Zhichao's case for the first time in the article "Aiding the Wronged, The People in Action".
In the autumn of 2014, due to the delay in the progress of the case, the previous agency entrustment contract was only 3 years, and Shangquan Law Firm and Ma Yuping terminated the entrustment relationship. Ma Yuping, who left Shangquan's office, felt desperate and did not know how to go down the road of appealing for her son.
Li Xun of Dayu Began to act as an agent and went to Zibo to meet Zhang Zhichao for the first time
At this moment, the Nian Bin case was rehabilitated and caused a sensation throughout the country. Zhang Yansheng, a lawyer at Beijing Dayu Law Firm, is Nian Bin's defense lawyer. Ma Yuping then wanted to go to Dayu Law Firm, intending to find lawyer Zhang Yansheng, but Lawyer Zhang Yansheng was not in the firm that day, and he was received by Lawyer Li Xun, director of Dayu Law Firm.
Lawyer Li Xun remembers that it was after the "Eleventh" holiday break that he received a call from Ma Yuping asking for the address of Dayu's office. Then I answered two or three phone calls in a row, all of which took the wrong way and continued to ask him for directions. After tossing and turning, Ma Yuping finally found Dayu and stood in front of him.
Ma Yuping once recalled her sad state of mind when she was looking for Dayu: she had been running for 3 years, the case still did not have a clue, looked up at the high-rise buildings in Beijing, really wanted to run to the top of the tallest high-rise building, jumped, ended all this, and didn't have to care about anything... Of course, this is just a thought, for the sake of her son who is still in prison, she must continue to insist!
At that time, Li Xun was receiving a female client. Ma Yuping did not enter the office directly through the front desk, and Li Xun had to interrupt the original conversation to receive her.
After listening to Ma Yuping's oral introduction, Li Xun really did not think about whether to take over the case at first. He didn't understand everything ma Yuping, who had a heavy Shandong accent. While he and the other lawyers in the firm were discussing how to handle the case, Ma Yuping suddenly knelt on the ground and prostrated her head desperately, crying and begging the lawyer to take over the case.
Therefore, Li Xun said to the female client he had received before: "I will not accept your case no matter how high the legal fee, and I will not take her case without legal fees." ”
When sending Ma Yuping away that day, she learned that Ma Yuping's husband had died of illness, and Ma Yuping relied on washing dishes in the hotel to do odd jobs and earn money as a nanny, and her savings were spent on the way to appeal for her son. By train, you can only take a green-skinned hard seat, and you can only live in the basement of a hotel, which is particularly difficult economically, so Li Xun took out all the thousands of yuan in cash in his wallet and gave it to Ma Yuping.
After that, Lawyer Li Xun represented Zhang Zhichao in the case not only did not charge lawyer fees, did not charge travel expenses, but every time he saw Ma Yuping, he would also take out some cash to help her.
Because the materials given by Ma Yuping when she came were incomplete, Li Xun asked Ma Yuping to send all the materials that could be put together. After reading all the materials, Li Xun found that there were many doubts in this case, and there were big problems.
A child under the age of 16 who dares to rape and kill people should have been socially mixed up before and associated with many adult bad guys. But Zhang Zhichao is a good student with good character and excellent learning, is still a class leader, and has never left the school. Rape and murder do not count, and the next day dare to rape corpses, which is too unimaginable for minors under the age of 16...
Since it is a rape case, it is always necessary to identify the vaginal discharge, but there is no identification. However, the saliva in the victim's mouth was identified by the public security organs. In rape cases, it is really strange not to identify vaginal secretions, but to identify oral saliva. It is very likely that the vaginal secretions were actually identified at the beginning, but because it was beneficial to the defendant Zhang Zhichao, he deliberately did not use it as evidence and hid it.
Concealing evidence in favour of the accused is a common feature of the formation of unjust cases.
Another key point is that the autopsy report shows that the victim Gao Ting was still a virgin before she died, which is too questionable. Before the autopsy report came out, Zhang Zhichao's confession said that the sexual act of penis insertion into the vagina actually occurred, and after the autopsy report came out, the confession became just "rubbing", and there was no actual insertion. This is very doubtful, Zhang Zhichao has not been beaten into a confession.
After taking over Zhang Zhichao's case, Li Xun still had many cases to deal with, and he did not bother to go up to meet Zhang Zhichao for a while. Suddenly, one day, Ma Yuping called and asked him why he had not yet gone to meet Zhang Zhichao. Li Xun explained that this time was too busy, and he would go to meet Zhang Zhichao as soon as possible after dealing with the matter at hand.
Li Xun remembers that on February 16, 2015 (the 28th day of the lunar month), he came to Luzhong Prison in Zibo City, Shandong Province, and met Zhang Zhichao for the first time.
Li Xun remembered that it was the coldest day since the winter in Zibo City that year. Later, whenever there was a major moment in Zhang Zhichao's case, God had some special reactions. For example, on the day of the reopening of Zhang Zhichao's case, it snowed heavily in Zibo.
In the meeting room, Li Xun met Zhang Zhichao for the first time. At this time, Zhang Zhichao had been imprisoned for nearly 9 years. Zhang Zhichao gave him the feeling that he was cautious and sensitive, like a child whose mind had not yet matured, unlike an adult who was already 25 years old.
During that meeting, Zhang Zhichao clearly told Li Xun that he did not know the victim, Gao Ting, nor had he touched Gao Ting, and that he confessed that the confession was extracted by torture by the relevant personnel.
After the meeting, Li Xun came out and explained to Ma Yuping: "I was really busy some time ago, but you can rest assured that the things I promised will definitely be able to do." ”
This brief conversation eliminated the estrangement and misunderstanding that existed between the two. Later, when Zhang Zhichao's case was ordered to be retried by the Supreme People's Court, Li Xun also joked with what Ma Yuping had accused him of.
Walking on the streets of Zibo in winter, Li Xun felt very uncomfortable. Just like the cold of that day, Zhang Zhichao's encounter deeply touched his heart. It was also this intolerance that became the driving force for him to unremittingly drum and shout for Zhang Zhichao's case in the future.
Zhang Zhichao's second aunt Weibo private message, I saw Zhang Zhichao's case materials
In December 2014, Hu Gejile was rehabilitated, and the Supreme People's Court instructed the Shandong Provincial High People's Court to review nie Shubin's case in a different place, and the situation of redressing unjust, false and wrongly decided cases nationwide reached a climax, and the Chen Xiaying case, Xu Jinlong's case, and Li Jinlian's case were all reported by the media. At that time, I went to a seminar on unjust cases held at the Jimen Forum of China University of Political Science and Law, wrote a speech in advance, and later published it on my Weibo and blog, with the title "How Many Unjust Cases Are Still Moaning?" 》。
Here is the full text of this article:
Seeing that many media outlets are rushing to report on the Hugjil pattern today, I suddenly recalled a scene from six or seven years ago. Wang Zhenyu, the lawyer representing Hugjile Pattern, is a very good friend of mine for many years. One day, he suddenly said, "Can you report on that Hugjile pattern in Inner Mongolia, please, his parents come to the law firm once a week, it's so pitiful." ”
I knew he must have lost his mind a bit. Because this case was transferred to him by Wang Jian, a reporter from our Democracy and Legal Affairs Agency, and asked him to represent him. At that time, two reporters from our Democracy and Legal Affairs Agency, Wang Jian and Chu Jinghui, used to work in the magazine "Law and Life", and the first person who came into contact with the Hugjile pattern was Chu Jinghui, who was born in Inner Mongolia, and when he left the Democracy and Legal Affairs Agency, he left the case to Wang Jian as a "legacy", and Wang Jian found lawyer Wang Zhenyu and asked him to represent him.
If you think about it, the case that my colleague handed over to him, there was no report, there must be a pain of not being able to report, and he turned back to me, isn't it a little irrational? People do not ask for people to be as tall, a "please" word, how difficult to say ah! No matter how difficult the case was, he had never said so, and he blurted out for the sake of Hugjiletu.
But I can also clearly feel his deep sympathy for Hugjiletu's parents, a lawyer, once he is full of his feelings to do the case, often there are emotional things when the brain is temporarily deprived of oxygen.
Since then, until today, for six or seven years, the Hugjile pattern has finally retried and filed a case, and the dawn of rehabilitation can be seen, so a large group of reporters have flocked to go... If we are engaged in the media, should we have a question in our hearts: Did you go earlier?
This is true of the Hugjil pattern, and the same is true of the Nian Bin case. A month before Nian Bin was rehabilitated, his sister Nian Jianlan called me and asked if I could report on it, but I politely declined because of other interview tasks. In fact, "Democracy and Legal Times" and "Democracy and Legal System" magazines, as early as 2011, reported the Nian Bin case separately, both have a large space, and they can't always be our media reports.
When the Nian Bin case was rehabilitated, the national media flocked to it again, and those of us who did the media should have a question in our hearts: Did you go earlier?
If unjust cases must wait until they are rehabilitated and then reported with great fanfare, wouldn't that be tantamount to telling the world that Chinese journalists do not have the minimum ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and as long as the court does not redress unjust cases, we reporters will not be able to see it?
In fact, these unjust cases are bald on the head of lice - obviously, as long as they are reported objectively and fairly, let the people of the whole country know, everyone will judge, that is an unjust case!
As far as the Hugjile pattern is concerned, the fact that the retrial and filing of the case this time has a very big relationship with the media reports. Initially, the Legal Evening News issued a not-so-conclusive news that the Hugjil pattern was expected to be retried. Actually? At that time, the Inner Mongolia court system did not show any signs of retrial at all. However, the news media was out of control, and they all reprinted and reported, especially CCTV also reported, and finally made it false, and the Hugjile pattern was really retried and filed.
The media is not useless, and in terms of redressing unjust cases, the media can play a great role, but the media is really inactive.
For example, the Case of Chen Xiaying in Fuqing, Fujian Province, is a clear and hard-core unjust case, but it was only reported 18 years after the case was reported by the contemptible people in the magazine "Democracy and the Legal System". ("Fuqing" IV. 26 "Kidnapping and Murder Investigation", http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5ff29ca40102ux0s.html) but there is no other media to follow, and the Fujian High Court, still carrying forward the spirit of "dead pigs are not afraid of boiling water", is to ignore you.
The Xu Jinlong case, which also occurred in Fujian ("Hulushan's 'Hulu Case' was 19 Years of "Killing Fathers and Enemies", http://www.infzm.com/content/91801"), reported by Southern Weekend, and reported by The Paper, the Fujian Higher People's Court is still "not afraid of boiling water".
Also, in 1998, the poisoning and murder of Li Jinlian in Ji'an, Jiangxi Province (for details, see Southern Weekend, December 20, 2013, "A PoisonIng Case, 223 Appeals"),).
http://www.infzm.com/content/96825), Zhu Zhongdao, a 78-year-old lawyer from a veteran judge, has been running away for more than a decade in this case.
There are many more such unjust cases, so please pay attention to the three non-governmental injustice-washing institutions.
The first is the "Aid Program for Wronged Persons" (http://www.sqxb.cn/index.html) of Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, which was jointly initiated by the Criminal Legal Aid Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law and Beijing Shangquan Law Firm, aiming to provide assistance to the wronged and urge the judicial organs to correct major unjust, false and wrong cases. The program will invite well-known domestic criminal law scholars, senior criminal defense lawyers, criminal justice workers, media workers, university graduate students and other people from all walks of life to participate together. Because it is a public welfare project, the program does not charge fees to the wronged, and all the costs arising from the assistance activities are borne by Shang Quan Law Firm. The five cases aided in the first batch are: the intentional homicide of Li Jinlian in Ji'an, Jiangxi, the kidnapping and murder case of "April 26" in Fuqing, Fujian, the robbery and murder case of Xu Jinlong and Zhang Meilai in Putian, Fujian, the case of Fan Maozhu in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, and the rape and murder case of Zhang Zhichao in Linshu County, Shandong Province.
Second, the "Action to Save Innocents and Wash Away Injustices" initiated by Professor Xu Xin has selected the "Top Ten Unjust Cases", of which four or five cases have officially launched assistance, and the top ones are the Hainan Chen Man Murder and Burning Case and the Fujian Chen Xiaying Case. Professor Xu Xin kept calling for Nie Shubin's case and for the HugJile pattern every day on Weibo, and sometimes felt that "I had no strength to exhale". In the cold and oxygen-deficient areas, I hope that the media people can support him.
Third, the "http://www.xiyuanwang.net/" initiated by lawyer Li Jinxing and others has cooperated with Professor Xu Xin, and the unjust cases of concern also overlap. Lawyer Li Jinxing, the co-sponsor of the project, provides a more general criterion: those major unjust cases that have not been paid attention to for a long time include "very unjust cases" that are being tried. According to Li Jinxing's summary, the selected cases all have striking consistency: torture to extract confessions; according to the death penalty policy at that time, the death penalty should be sentenced, but the death sentence should be suspended (that is, the so-called "leeway sentence to death suspension"),; it relies heavily on confessions; there is no objective evidence; there is evidence of alibi, but still convicted. Wait a minute.
Fourth, the "Legal Aid Center for The Unjust and weak" initiated by lawyer Yang Jinzhu mainly helps parties to unjust, false and wrongly decided cases sentenced to life imprisonment or above to wash away their grievances. Assistance will not be provided in criminal cases that are under investigation and criminal cases that are under trial at first instance. The Nie Shubin case in Hebei will be the first to be assisted by the center, and he also listed the intentional homicide case of Zhang Youyun, who was sentenced to a suspended death sentence in his defense in 2002, as the second case.
The media can really make a difference, and if they don't, it's a dereliction of duty. For example, I reported the Chen Xiaying case, I reported, no one said that it could not be reported, no one came to issue a ban, why did no other media also follow up the report? If everyone follows up the report together, chen xiaying's case will also be rehabilitated like the Hugjile pattern. You know, Chen Xiaying has been unjustly imprisoned for 18 years, and he was only 17 years old before he was imprisoned. One of his co-defendants has died unjustly in prison. How long will he be in prison, and will he be allowed to sit on the bottom of the prison?
Looking at this article today, there are many languages that are extreme. After chen xiaying's case was rehabilitated, I gradually learned that Ma Xinlan, president of the Fujian Higher People's Court, and Xu Shouhui, president of the trial supervision court, had done a great deal of work to promote the rehabilitation of The Chen Xiaying case and the Xu Jinlong case.
President Xu Shouhui pressed the issue of "Democracy and the Legal System" magazine that reported on Chen Xiaying's case under the glass of my desk, with the intention of urging himself to spare no effort to rehabilitate the unjust case. Whenever he came into contact with the wronged, President Xu Shouhui would also have tears in the corners of his eyes. However, before he was rehabilitated, he would also see all kinds of sneers on the Internet, including mine, and she could only bear it in silence. Many judges have suffered too much grievance for unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, and there is no place to complain.
Taking the opportunity to publish this article today, I would like to formally apologize to President Ma Xinlan and President Xu Shouhui, and please forgive me for my recklessness and ignorance!
I don't know how many people this article touched, but it certainly touched one person, that is, Zhang Zhichao's second aunt. To this day, I have not met this second aunt, nor do I know her name. But after the Spring Festival in 2015, Zhang Zhichao's second aunt contacted me through a private message on Weibo and thanked me for paying attention to Zhang Zhichao's case.
So I asked her what the specific facts of Zhang Zhichao's case really were, and could I understand it. She asked me to give her my mailing address, and soon a detailed set of case materials was on my desk.
I didn't take it apart immediately, but took it home. More than a month later, I once cleaned up my room and saw this parcel. I inadvertently opened it to read it, and was immediately fascinated by this case.
The Linyi Intermediate People's Court found Zhang Zhichao guilty as follows:
At about 6:20 a.m. on January 10, 2005, a month before the body was found, Zhang Zhichao met Gao Ting in a washing room in the teaching building of a middle school in Linshu, and saw no one around, that is, he had a heart of adultery. He went forward and used the pencil knife he carried with him to put it on Gao Mou's neck, and raped Gao Ting by covering his mouth and pinching his neck in the scrubbing room, causing her to suffocate to death. Subsequently, Zhang Zhichao moved the body to an abandoned toilet in the washing room to hide, and when he left, he met his classmate Wang Guangchao at the door of the washing room. Zhang said that he had killed someone and asked Wang Guangchao to help guard the scrubbing room, while he went to the commissary on the first floor to buy a new lock and returned to the third floor to re-lock the toilet. The next afternoon, Zhang Zhichao took advantage of the class of other students, carried a pencil knife, sneaked into the toilet to rape the corpse, and cut the body in many places...
A cursory look at the case file materials shows that the original trial verdict "only confessed and had no valid physical evidence": it was said to be rape, but Zhang Zhichao's semen was not extracted; there were three versions of why Zhang Zhichao stayed near the scene on the day of the incident; zhang Zhichao used a woven bag to cover the upper part of the body, but the police could not explain the source of the woven bag... The only physical evidence was a wooden stick — which was thought to have been inserted into the anus of the victim 's body — but for this small stick, neither the victim's relevant substances nor attempts were made to extract Zhang Zhichao's fingerprints. In this case, there are many doubts such as the lack of key evidence, the time and place of the crime are doubtful, the favorable evidence is hidden, and the confession is contradictory.
Campuses, middle school students, rape, homicide, suspected unjust cases... These news elements have been jumping around in the head, and I think this is a very reportable case. After reading all the materials in detail, I called shang quan's lawyer who had undertaken the case, asked for the lawyer's opinion, and gradually became convinced in my heart that the case was very problematic.
The key points, such as: Zhang Zhichao completed rape, murder, buying locks and changing locks and so many other things in just two or three minutes, which is impossible. Gao Ting's classroom was obviously on the second floor, and when the school raised the flag and ran for exercises that morning, why did she run to the third floor? In the scene investigation report, Gao Ting's clothes and shoes were neatly arranged, and it did not look like the crime scene at first glance, but like it had been forged...
I learned from Zhang Zhichao's second aunt that the case has now been handled by lawyer Li Xun of Beijing Dayu Law Firm, so I called Lawyer Li Xun and went to his law firm to learn more about Zhang Zhichao's case. He gave him a warm welcome and proposed that Zhang Zhichao's mother also come to the law firm to talk to me. So I suggested that I could ask a few more media reporters to come together and let the media colleagues know about the case.
At that time, I set up a WeChat group of media reporters called "Reporters from All Over the World", which had nearly 500 reporters. I sent a fact sheet on The Zhang Zhichao case to this group for everyone's opinion. Two or three minutes later, a number of media colleagues responded, saying that they were very interested in the case.
"Southern Weekend" reporter Ju Jing first contacted me, hoping to get detailed materials on Zhang Zhichao's case, so I informed Zhang Zhichao's second aunt and sent him a copy and sent it to Guangzhou. Liu Wanyong, deputy director of the special reporting department of China Youth Daily, said that he would send reporters to Dayu to learn about the case.
A few days later, I went to Dayu Law Firm with several media colleagues and met Lawyer Li Xun and Zhang Zhichao's mother Ma Yuping for the first time. Meeting with Lu Yijie, a reporter from China Youth Daily, was also the first time. After listening to Lawyer Li Xun's hanging explanation of the case, and after listening to Ma Yuping's tearful remarks, everyone discussed it and went to Linshu, Shandong Province, for an on-the-spot interview.
The reporter went to Linshu for on-the-spot interviews, and the first round of reports caused a sensation throughout the country
On May 24, 2015, I went to Linshu for an on-site interview with Liu Yanxun, a reporter from Southern Weekend, Jenny Liu from the Beijing News, and a reporter from the Qilu Evening News (I can't remember the name, I just remember that I am very fat and fat, and I should still have his WeChat, I hope he will say hello to me in WeChat after reading this article) accompanied by lawyer Li Xun and Ma Yuping. Lu Yijie, a reporter from China Youth Daily, called and said that he was doing an interview in Qinghai, and he rushed over immediately after the interview.
We first went to the branch of Linshu No. 2 Middle School, the place where Zhang Zhichao's case occurred, which had been renamed "Xinghua Middle School" at that time, and the school did not block the reporter's interview.
We went directly to the abandoned washing room on the third floor of the teaching building, that is, the scene where the deceased Gao Ting was found. Although ten years have passed, the washing room is still abandoned, and it is still the scene of the crime.
This washing room is divided into two parts, the inside and outside, with a wooden door in the middle. Inside the wooden door is a urinal and a squat for poop, with planks divided into three rooms on the left and right, and a window at the end. Outside the wooden door, flanked by a high sink with a tap that can be rinsed and washed.
At the time of the crime, the wooden door had been locked, and the boys could not go inside to defecate, but the half outside the wooden door could still be washed and washed.
The case described by the Linyi Intermediate Court is that Zhang Zhichao met Gao Ting at the door of this washing room, dragged her into the washing room, kicked open the wooden door inside, knocked the door lock broken, raped and killed Gao Ting inside the wooden door, and then ran out, met Wang Guangchao at the door of the washing room, told Wang Guangchao that he had killed people, let Wang Guangchao help him watch, he went downstairs to the commissary to buy a lock, and then ran back to change the lock...
The dormitories of important witnesses Wang Xubo and Yang Tongzhen are next to this scrubbing room, and from the door of their dormitory to the door of the scrubbing room, it is only ten meters away. Wang Xubo's testimony was that when he heard a girl outside calling for help, he hurriedly put on his shoes and ran out, and then he saw that Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao were already standing at the door of the washing room... Then, from the time he heard the cry for help to the time he saw Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao standing at the door, it was only two or three minutes at most, and Zhang Zhichao had to complete so many things such as "rape, murder, instructing Wang Guangchao to guard the scene at the door, going downstairs to the commissary to buy a lock, and running back to change the lock", which was obviously impossible.
Yang Tongzhen's testimony also does not stand up to scrutiny. He said that after Wang Xubo rushed out of the dormitory, he also came out a minute later and saw that Wang Xubo was walking towards Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao... The scrubbing room is next door, only ten meters apart, walking slowly is ten seconds, how can Wang Xubo not walk for a minute?
We went downstairs to look for the commissary - the case shows that after Zhang Zhichao raped and killed people on the third floor, because he kicked and broke the lock of the wooden door in the washroom, he ordered Wang Guangchao to guard the door of the washroom, ran downstairs to the commissary to buy a lock, bought the lock and ran back to lock the door.
Ten years later, the commissary has long disappeared, but the building is still there, from the commissary to the teaching building there is a distance of more than 300 meters, from the first floor of the teaching building to the third floor of the scrubbing room, there is also a distance of more than 300 meters, two or three minutes of time, Zhang Zhichao is just running up and down is not enough, there is no time to commit crimes.
In the field investigation, it takes 76 seconds to quickly run down the stairs from the scrubbing room on the third floor of the teaching building to the commissary, and it takes 150 seconds, that is, 2 minutes and 30 seconds, to go round-trip. The act of going back to lock the door after completing the purchase of the lock is not counting the length of the transaction with the salesman, and the time is almost the same as the time of the crime determined in the first-instance judgment. So, how can Zhang Zhichao have time to complete the series of criminal acts charged?
After we left Linshu, I began to question a detail: The Linyi Intermediate Court determined that the time of the crime was 6:20 a.m., would the school commissary open so early? In general, the commissary of the school has to open the door at eight or nine o'clock and ninety o'clock, and some even open the door late until noon after school. I think it's not normal to open the door so early. But it has been ten years since the crime occurred, is it easy to find the operator of the commissary at that time?
I asked Ma Yuping to look for the operator of the commissary and ask her when the commissary opened. Ma Yuping really found the operator, she said: The opening time every morning is 7:10. The judgment determined that the time of Zhang Zhichao's crime was 6:20. At this time, the commissary did not open the door at all, how did Zhang Zhichao buy the lock? With such an important plot, why didn't the investigators find the operator of the commissary to take notes?
We found Xu Jian, Zhang Zhichao's class teacher at the time. Teacher Xu Jian introduced that at that time, he had just become a class teacher, and soon after he had a case of Zhang Zhichao, he was punished for writing and checking, and he never became a class teacher again. But he said he told the lawyers representing the Shandong Higher People's Court and Zhang Zhichao that he only signed Zhang Zhichao's interrogation record afterwards, and that he was not present when the police interrogated Zhang Zhichao. He also said to Ma Yuping, as long as it is for your son's sake, whenever I am asked to testify, I will do it, as his teacher, I will always be responsible for him.
We also found the fruit stall of the father of yang Tongzhen, an important witness, who said that it has been ten years since the incident, and the child did not want to be disturbed anymore, and politely refused to be interviewed. We looked for Wang Xubo, and the news we heard was that Wang Xubo seemed to have left Linshu, and no one had seen him for many years, nor could he find his family.
After interviewing the public security, court and other case-handling units, we left Linshu and went to Zibo, and lawyer Li Xun went to Luzhong Prison to meet Zhang Zhichao, and then returned to Beijing after the interview.
On the day we left Zibo, Lu Yijie went to Linshu, and Ma Yuping rushed to Linshu to receive him. Lu Yijie went the latest, but the manuscript was the earliest. On Wednesday, May 27, his book "The Misty Rape and Murder of Middle School Students" was published in China Youth Daily, the first time the news media reported on Zhang Zhichao's case.
"Southern Weekend" is published every Thursday, so Lu Yijie wrote in Linshu overnight after the interview, and rushed to publish it in front of Southern Weekend. On May 28, Liu Yanxuncai's "Ten Years of Suspected Campus Rape and Murder Cases to Be Solved" was also published in Southern Weekend.
China Youth Daily and Southern Weekend are both very influential media in China, and these two reports have caused Zhang Zhichao's case to heat up rapidly and attract public attention. Ma Yuping said that many people in Linshu County greeted her when they saw her, asked about her son's case, and students in school were also talking about Zhang Zhichao's case.
In mid-June, democracy and the legal system magazine published "Suspicious Clouds of School Rape and Murder case of Flower Season Teenagers" in the 17th issue of 2015, reporting on Zhang Zhichao's case.
In mid-June, Phoenix SATELLITE TV's "Social Visibility" column interviewed lawyer Li Xun and reported zhang Zhichao's case on video. They had a telephone connection with Wang Guangchao, who said that he did not shield Zhang Zhichao and did not know Gao Ting, and that the confession of guilt was formed after being tortured.
In mid-August, democracy and the legal system magazine published the 23rd issue of 2015 "Shandong Linshu Zhang Zhichao Case, Where is the Evidence?" Again, the Zhang Zhichao case was reported.
In this report, I listed various evidence contradictions in Zhang Zhichao's case, especially at 6:20 a.m. at the time of the crime, but the commissary opened at 7:10 a.m., how could Zhang Zhichao buy a lock from the commissary? I pointed out that this is new evidence of "a sword sealing the throat", and based on this new evidence alone, Zhang Zhichao's case should be retried.
The Jimen Forum discussed Zhang Zhichao's case, and the Shandong Procuratorate filed a case for review
In the autumn of 2015, I consulted with lawyer Li Xun and wanted to invite well-known legal scholars in Beijing to discuss Zhang Zhichao's case and put forward expert opinions for Zhang Zhichao's appeal, which would play a catalytic role. I thought of Li Xuan, an associate professor at the Law School of the Central University of Finance and Economics, who has given me and many rule of law reporters great support and encouragement over the years, hoping that he can help us organize and plan a seminar. In addition, I also invited lawyer Li Jinxing, who has made great contributions to the rehabilitation of the Wu Changlong case, the Chen Xiaying case, the Chen Man case, and other unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, to discuss them together.
I remember that in a winery designated by Lawyer Li Xun, Li Xuan, Li Xun, Li Jinxing, and I held a "Four Li Conference" to plan a seminar on Zhang Zhichao's case. Professor Li Xuan suggested contacting Professor He Bing of the Public Decision-Making Center of China University of Political Science and Law and using the "Jimen Decision-making" forum to hold it.
Under the auspices of Professor Li Xuan, on the afternoon of October 22, 2015, the 92nd Jimen Decision-making Forum of the Public Decision-Making Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law was held, with the theme of "Obstacles to Unjust Rehabilitation and Overcoming: From the Nie Shubin Case and Zhang Zhichao Case", presided over by Wu Hongqi, Associate Professor of the Academy of Evidence Science of China University of Political Science and Law, Chen Yongsheng, a well-known expert in criminal procedure law and associate professor of Peking University Law School, as the keynote speaker, Xu Xin, professor of Beijing Institute of Technology Law School, and Li Fenfei, associate professor of law school of Chinese Min University Li Xuan, associate professor of the Central University of Finance and Economics, and well-known criminal defense lawyers Zhu Mingyong, Mao Lixin, Li Xun and others participated in the commentary.
Chen Yongsheng and many scholars and lawyers who participated in the commentary believe that in judicial practice, the high threshold for initiating criminal retrial procedures, the unreasonable litigation status of the three organs of public, procuratorial, and legal organs, the interference of external administrative forces, the lack of judicial conscience and independent personality, and the insufficient mobilization of social forces are the four main obstacles to unjust rehabilitation.
They also conducted an in-depth analysis of Zhang Zhichao's case, pointed out various doubts and unreasonableness in the case, and clearly stated that the case should be retried.
This seminar gave me the privilege of getting to know Mr. Li Fenfei and Mr. Chen Yongsheng, and at the time of the seminar, I could not predict how much role they would play in promoting the rehabilitation of Zhang Zhichao's case later. I thought that after the discussion, the experts and scholars would leave, but in fact, this was not the case at all. Since then, these legal scholars have been very concerned about Zhang Zhichao's case, and for several years, they have spared no effort to promote the rehabilitation of Zhang Zhichao's case.
This seminar also had a considerable impact on the Judicial Organs of Shandong. Shortly after the seminar, Ma Yuping told lawyer Li Xun that the case had made a major breakthrough in the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate, and the procurator told her that Zhang Zhichao's case had been reviewed by the court, and the review period was 6 months, and within 6 months, she would give a reply on whether to recommend a protest or send a procuratorial recommendation to the court, and also to reject the appeal.
New Year greetings to Zhang Zhichao, Luzhong Prison did not stop
On January 1, 2016, I wrote "2016, New Year's Greetings to Zhang Zhichao"——
Zhichao:
Happy New Year! I haven't met, but I think you already know me. Today is the first day of 2016, and I would like to write you a letter about what I have wanted to say to you for more than a year.
In 2005, I went from a naval officer to a magazine of democracy and the rule of law of the China Law Society as a journalist, and you, from a first-year high school student under the age of 16, became a rapist and murderer and was put in prison. I worked as a journalist for ten years, and you, a prisoner for ten years. Ten years later, in 2015, I finally knew you, knew the facts of your case, and was convinced from the bottom of my heart that you were innocent. In ten years, different life trajectories have finally intersected.
How many decades does a person's life have? Moreover, from the age of 16 to 26, it is the most precious youth in life!
Although you have suffered grievances that ordinary people cannot imagine, and although you have experienced ten years of purgatory, I still have to say that you are lucky! Because there are too many unjust cases in China, there are very few that can be rehabilitated, and there are very few that can attract the attention of the media and the public, and you, after all, are a lucky person.
You should thank Beijing Dayu Law Firm, which cleared the grievances of Nian Bin's case, and Li Xun, who represented you in the complaint, not only do not charge lawyer fees, but also do not charge travel expenses, and even often sponsor your poor and lonely mother. You should be grateful to the lawyers who have represented you in your appeal case, without whom your case file would not have been difficult to retrieve and would not have made so much progress today.
You should thank the media such as China Youth Daily, Southern Weekend, Phoenix Satellite TV, Democracy and The Legal System, and it is their reports that have enabled your unjust case to enter the public eye, arouse widespread attention, and play a role in promoting public opinion for the next step of review and retrial.
You should thank the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court, which has already started a review of your case, and the Supreme People's Court has retrieved your case file.
You should also thank the CPC Central Committee for making a wise policy decision to further promote the rule of law, which has enabled today to have a good political environment for the rehabilitation of unjust cases. Unjust cases exist in every country and are an inevitable by-product of judicial activity. However, in foreign countries, after the completion of judicial procedures, it is difficult to redress unjust cases. In China, however, with the party's political principle of seeking truth from facts and correcting mistakes, even if an unjust case has been completed through the judicial process, there is still a possibility of rehabilitation.
Of course, what you should be most thankful for is your mother. After your father's death, she lived alone on low security, by washing dishes in restaurants and by going to people's homes as a nanny to get a little savings, but as long as she had a little money, she immediately ran back and forth for your complaints, begging for people everywhere!
Having said all this, it does not mean that your unjust case will be rehabilitated quickly, or that it will be rehabilitated in 2016. Your mother also said that maybe you can be rehabilitated, maybe you can't be rehabilitated. She spoke calmly, which I admired. One should not seek suffering, but one should learn to be calm in the face of suffering. I believe that your unjust case will eventually be rehabilitated, maybe 2016, maybe 2017, maybe it will take another decade, but we will definitely wait until the clouds clear and the injustice is revealed!
Having said all this, I just want to tell you that no matter whether your unjust case can be rehabilitated quickly, you must always remember that there are many people who care about you, help you, and do justice for you. For them, no matter where you are, you must face life optimistically and live strongly!
Regardless of whether the unjust case can be rehabilitated quickly, you must get out of prison alive, honor your lonely and poor mother, and give her a happy old age!
Regardless of whether an unjust case can be rehabilitated quickly, you must believe in the law, believe in justice, and believe in justice! No matter when justice comes, we should not give up. Justice is not necessarily an outcome, it should be a faith.
Regardless of whether the unjust case can be rehabilitated quickly, there are many, many people who are worried about you! You are still very young, and the road of life is still very long! You should exercise well, learn knowledge, and be fully prepared to go out of the high wall and contribute to society again in the future. No matter where you are, you have to respect everyone you meet around you, get along with people kindly, and give others more smiles.
Regardless of whether the wrongful conviction can be quickly rehabilitated, we will never give up our efforts to appeal. I remember one night in October last year, when I had dinner with Mr. Jiang Ping, I mentioned your case and showed him the relevant reports. He didn't say anything, but his expression was a little dignified. He is 85 years old this year, and I'm sure he will be willing to speak up for your wrongdoing if need be.
Wishing 2016, you can walk out of the high wall! May 2016 you believe in justice!
I published it on my weibo, blog and WeChat public account, and Zhang Zhichao's mother, Ma Yuping, downloaded it from the Internet, printed it out, and handed it over to Zhang Zhichao when she went to Luzhong Prison to visit Zhang Zhichao. Zhang Zhichao later recalled that Teacher Li Meng's letter made me very moved, and conveyed a voice, that is, there were many people outside helping me, and also gave me a belief that my unjust case was very promising. He also treasured the letter and kept it with him.
After 2015, a large number of media reports about Zhang Zhichao were not allowed to see Zhang Zhichao in prison, saying that they were afraid of causing his ideological fluctuations and not conducive to his work and life in prison. However, the letter was not blocked by the prison guards and was smoothly delivered to Zhang Zhichao's hands.
I think that the prison guards must have read this letter beforehand and were also moved, and at the same time felt that the content of this letter was conducive to Zhang Zhichao's work and life in prison, so they did not stop it.
Lawyer Wang Dianxue joined the agent, and the three of them rushed to Jinan together
In the spring of 2016, Lawyer Wang Dianxue of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm introduced me to investigate and interview the Case of Yan Pingping in Shanxi, and after the investigation and interview, we returned to Beijing together. On the way back to Beijing, I remember that when I was waiting for the train in the waiting room of taiyuan railway station, I talked to him about Zhang Zhichao's case and suggested that he also act as Zhang Zhichao's lawyer for his appeal, and Wang Dianxue immediately agreed.
The reason why I invited Wang Dianxue was also to take a fancy to his previous media background. Before becoming a lawyer in 2015, he had a ten-year career as a media reporter, and worked as a journalist mainly engaged in rule of law reporting in media such as The Beijing News and Southern Metropolis Daily. The two of us met in 2007 during an interview with the Two Sessions, and we have been friends ever since we met.
In May 2014, Wang Dianxue became the lawyer representing Xu Jinlong in Fujian Province, and invited me to investigate and interview Xu Jinlong's case. Later, Xu Jinlong's case was retried and rehabilitated, and Wang Dianxue also became famous in one fell swoop.
For the rehabilitation of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, although Wang Dianxue has not been a lawyer for a long time, he has already had a certain reputation and influence, and he has many friends in the media circle. I think that Zhang Zhichao's case also needs to increase the promotion of media reports, and if Wang Dianxue can join, there will definitely be new improvements in this regard.
Wang Dianxue agreed, but did Lawyer Li Xun agree to let him participate in the representation? After all, Zhang Zhichao has attracted widespread attention from public opinion, and the appearance rate of his appeal lawyer is already very high, adding an agent lawyer, the appearance rate will be equally divided, not to mention that Wang Dianxue is still a media person, may not be more than equally divided, will Lawyer Li Xun think more?
I communicated with Lawyer Li Xun, and I originally made an appointment to meet him, but Li Xun said that he was very busy and wanted to go on a business trip to other places, and he could only meet once at Beijing South Railway Station. Originally planning to go to Beijing South Railway Station to meet, Li Xun was very curious, asked me what the matter was, and engaged in such a mysterious. I simply said on the phone that I wanted Wang Dianxue to also represent Zhang Zhichao in the case, and as a result, Li Xun agreed very cheerfully, almost without thinking. In this way, lawyer Wang Dianxue also accepted the entrustment to represent Zhang Zhichao's appeal in the case.
In late April 2016, as the Six-Month Deadline for the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate to review Zhang Zhichao's case approached, Mr. Li Xun, me, and Lawyer Wang Dianxue, who later joined the agency, became anxious.
We are worried that the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate will reject the complaint, and we are also worried that the review will be postponed. The three of them discussed and organized another academic seminar to invite more experts and scholars to come to the seminar to study Zhang Zhichao's case more thoroughly and prepare for the next step of appeal work.
I tried to invite Mr. Chen Guangzhong, an 85-year-old and highly respected Chinese leader in criminal procedure law, former president of China University of Political Science and Law, to participate in the seminar. Before, I had Mr. Chen Guangzhong's WeChat, but I didn't have any personal relationships, and I was worried about whether Elder Chen remembered me. With the attitude of trying it out, the materials of Zhang Zhichao's case were sent to Elder Chen through WeChat and an invitation to attend the meeting was issued.
After the invitation was sent, there was no response that day. Two days later, Elder Chen responded with a line: "I have read the materials, and I can participate in your seminar." ”
Seeing this line, I was ecstatic, I did not expect that inviting him to the old man's house would be so smooth and so simple.
Lawyer Wang Dianxue also brought good news, he invited Professor Chen Weidong of Chinese Min University and Professor Zhang Jianwei of Peking University. Teachers Li Fenfei, Chen Yongsheng and Li Xuan, who participated in the last seminar, all agreed with one mouth, which made us very moved.
Previously, the Supreme Court had repeatedly wanted to interview Zhang Zhichao in the Linyi Intermediate Court by video, but the Linyi Intermediate Court had always said that their network equipment had not yet been properly equipped and did not have the conditions for video interviews. After the news of the seminar was released, the Linyi Intermediate Court informed that the network equipment was ready and the Supreme Court could receive a video visit.
On April 25, lawyers Li Xun and Wang Dianxue came to the Linyi Intermediate Court to participate in the video interview of the Supreme Court and had the first video exchange with the visiting judge on Zhang Zhichao's case.
The Supreme People's Court conducted the first video interview on Zhang Zhichao's case, and "China Youth Online" reported it in a timely manner, and the reporter was still Lu Yijie. After three or four years, Lu Yijie has been sparing no effort to report on Zhang Zhichao's case, as long as There is any slight progress in Zhang Zhichao's case, Lu Yijie will be the first time to report it on "China Youth Online".
After completing the first video interview of the Supreme Court, the two lawyers, Ma Yuping and I went to the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate together to inquire about the progress of the case filing and review, and the answer they got was that the case was still complicated and needed to continue to be reviewed. However, we believe that the reasons for initiating a retrial in Zhang Zhichao's case are very sufficient, and the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate should apply for a supreme procuratorial counter-prosecution as soon as possible, or issue a retrial procuratorial recommendation to the Shandong Higher People's Court. What resistance did you encounter? Nor can we know.
The three of us went back to Beijing together, and Ma Yuping went to Zibo to see Zhang Zhichao.
Zhang Zhichao's case was held again, and Professor Chen Guangzhong spoke out
On April 27, 2016, the seminar on "Improving the Initiation Procedure for Criminal Case Appeals - Taking the Case of Zhang Zhichao in Shandong Province as an Example" was held in Beijing, chen Guangzhong, Chen Weidong, Zhang Jianwei, Chen Yongsheng, Li Fenfei, and Li Xuan all expressed their opinions, as well as Yang Xiong of Beijing Normal University and Zhang Jiahua, associate professor of the Law Department of the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and Wang Peng, forensic doctor, commented on the autopsy report of the case. Lawyers such as Mao Lixin, Wang Zhaohua and Xiong Ying also participated in the discussion. More than 30 media outlets, including China Youth Daily, Beijing News, and The Paper, also attended the seminar.
Lawyers Li Xun and Wang Dianxue first introduced the case.
Li Xun said that the results of the reconstruction of the scene show that Zhang Zhichao did not have the time to commit the crime. Ma Yuping found the owner of the school commissary. According to the owner, the door usually opens at 7:10 a.m. every morning. However, the police records show that Zhang Zhichao claimed that he went to the commissary at about 6:20 to buy a lock, which was used to lock the door of the crime scene.
Li Xun also mentioned a detail: "The lock, as the physical evidence of this case, violates the laws of nature. Zhang Zhichao confessed that he kicked the door open with his foot, and the result was that the lock was broken, and the hanging nose on the door was not broken. ”
In addition, Lawyer Li Xun also found a new piece of evidence shortly before the meeting: Gao Ting's body was found wearing a full body - a jacket, pants and shoes - completely inconsistent with the description of the last female classmate who met her, and this female classmate was questioned by the police shortly after Gao Ting's disappearance and recorded, and the possibility of her misremembering is very small. In other words, Gao Ting was probably not killed on the day of her disappearance, and she later changed her clothes.
After the two lawyers introduced the case, Professor Chen Guangzhong said: "Zhang Zhichao's case is even more obvious than Nie Shubin's case. Even in the Nie Shubin case, he only stated that "it was a highly suspected unjust case" and "believed that the conditions for retrial were met"; and for Zhang Zhichao's case, he directly said: "Not only the conditions for retrial have been met, but also the conditions for rehabilitation." ”
Professor Chen Weidong, executive vice president of the China Society for the Study of Criminal Procedure Law and director of the Research Center for Litigation System and Judicial Reform at Chinese Min University, believes that Zhang Zhichao's case reflects the main drawbacks of public security organs in criminal investigation, that is, the collection of evidence does not adhere to the principle of comprehensive collection, especially physical evidence. The most important physical evidence in this case is semen, fingerprints, footprints and some other on-site evidence, and the verbal evidence is also full of contradictions.
Chen Weidong believes that criminal complaints, as a very important procedural right of citizens, are not perfect in terms of legislation. The main problem is the non-litigation of the act of appeal. At present, appeals are mainly an act outside the litigation, there is no special legal norm, how the parties to file, how the relevant departments accept, and what methods to review and make decisions after acceptance are all beyond the norms of the Criminal Procedure Law. To improve criminal complaints, the next step is to incorporate complaints into the proceedings. Chen Weidong believes that the tripartite structure and the mechanism of joint participation should be adhered to in order to convince the parties, especially the complainants.
Chen Yongsheng, executive director of the China Case Law Research Association and associate professor of Peking University Law School, believes that in addition to the many doubts pointed out by the appeal lawyer and media reports, there are two major doubts in this case: first, why the vagina or semen around the vagina is not extracted for identification, which is contrary to common sense; second, many confessions have said that the victim's pants are pulled to the knees and raped, in fact, it is difficult to complete the rape when the pants are faded to the knees.
Li Fenfei, an associate professor at the Law School of Chinese Min University and deputy director of the Research Center for Litigation System and Judicial Reform, believes that the only thing that can really link Zhang Zhichao to the case is the confession, that is, this is relatively isolated evidence. Why is it so hard to start a retrial now? Mixing the criteria for initiating a retrial with the criteria for retrial and retrial and retrial, and the correction of the retrial often relies on the small probability of the return of the "deceased" and the reappearance of the real murderer, which is actually the sadness of legal people. The correction of wrongful cases depends on the court that made the effective judgment to correct itself, and from the perspective of the basic law of human nature, it is contrary to human nature to let the judicial organs correct their own mistakes.
In this regard, lawyer Mao Lixin said that in recent years, many unjust cases of rehabilitation have certain commonalities: First, there is no physical evidence that can directly point to the defendant; second, the case is mainly determined by confession, and there are serious problems in the legality and authenticity of the confession, the legality is mainly the problem of extorting confessions by torture, and the authenticity is mainly a problem that cannot be ruled out by comparing evidence between evidence; third, there is a certain amount of evidence to prove that there is no time to commit the crime. Zhang Zhichao's case is also fully in line with these three commonalities.
Scholars participate in academic exchange activities and present their feelings to the supreme court judges in person
After the seminar, the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate announced that the review of Zhang Zhichao's case had been postponed for three months, and then postponed several times.
After the seminar, China Youth Daily and other media reported on the speeches of experts and scholars in the seminar, which promoted the judicial organs' attention and review of Zhang Zhichao's case.
After this seminar, in June 2016, Shanghai Oriental Satellite TV went to Linshu to record the case of Zhang Zhichao, and reported it on video with "Review of Zhang Zhichao's Case", which had a huge impact.
Before the case of an unjust, false or wrongly decided case was reported on video by two provincial satellite television stations before it was rehabilitated, it was also unprecedented.
After this seminar, in August 2016, democracy and the legal system magazine published "Shandong Zhang Zhichao's Case Review Postponed Again" in the 31st issue of 2016, and reported on Zhang Zhichao's case for the third time.
After this seminar, Li Fenfei took advantage of the opportunity of academic exchanges with the Supreme People's Court to arrange for lawyer Li Xun to present the situation of Zhang Zhichao's case to the judge of the Supreme People's Court's Trial Supervision Division.
At that time, it was an academic visit and exchange activity jointly organized by the Law School of Chinese Min University and the Supreme People's Court in the United States, and there would be judges of the Supreme People's Court, including the president of the Trial Supervision Division and several judges.
When Professor Li Fenfei learned of this situation, he thought of the Zhang Zhichao case, and thought that if Lawyer Li Xun could sign up for this academic visit and exchange activity and spend a week with the judges of the Supreme Court's Trial Supervision Division, he would have the opportunity to present the case of Zhang Zhichao's case to them in person, which might arouse the attention of the Supreme Court Trial Supervision Division to Zhang Zhichao's case.
After he called to inform Li Xun's lawyer, Li Xun was very happy and immediately agreed to sign up. After agreeing to register, Li Xun did not hesitate in the slightest, and decided to give generously for Zhang Zhichao's case.
Sure enough, in a hotel in Seattle, the United States, Li Xun stated the grievances of Zhang Zhichao's case to the judge of the Supreme Court's Trial Supervision Division, and the Supreme Court's order to the Shandong Higher Court to retry Zhang Zhichao's case must have played an important role.
In December 2016, the Supreme People's Court conducted a second video interview on Zhang Zhichao's case. During this period, the Supreme People's Court retrieved the file of Zhang Zhichao's case and examined it.
On January 1, 2017, I wrote "2017, New Year's Message to One Man" -
On the day of the old and the new, the New Year's messages are rolling all over the screen, but after watching a lot, there is almost nothing particularly touching.
The so-called "dedication" is actually a congratulatory message, congratulating the New Year, and naturally writing a lot of beautiful and touching words. Looking back on the past year, the achievements are brilliant, looking forward to the new year, full of pride and high morale. This kind of "dedication style", in fact, is a bit like the Long Endowment of the Han Dynasty, which is generally empty and empty, piling up rhetoric, in fact, there is nothing to say, if it is not used to sing praises and praises, it can only be pretentious lyrical. The so-called "Southern Zhou Dedication", when you think about it now, is actually a historical misunderstanding.
It was also used to pat the horse's ass, but I always wanted to bring some thorns into it while singing the praises, stimulating the thick horse skin, and the result was that the horse's ass hurt, or the horse's hoof.
Now I want to write a dedication, I just want to dedicate it to one person, and I feel that this country and society owe him an apology.
He is only 27 years old this year, but has been in prison for 11 years, and was imprisoned when he was less than 16 years old. If it was not a minor at that time, it is likely that it was the second Nie Shubin, who was not sentenced to life, but sentenced to death. He is Nie Shubin of Shandong. The Shandong Higher People's Court reviewed Nie Shubin's case, twists and turns, and finally reached a fair conclusion. And Shandong's own unjust case? I remember a Lawyer from Shandong told me that Shandong had never redressed an unjust case. I said at the time, I don't believe in evil. Now it seems that it is really very evil.
Zhichao, what pains me the most is that from the China Youth Daily on May 27, 2015, when it reported on your case, another year and a half later, you still haven't been rehabilitated, walked out of prison, breathed in the air of freedom, and reunited with your lonely mother. Your mother saw a glimmer of hope in the news reports and ran for you for another year and a half, but still no results. The Shandong Provincial Procuratorate has postponed the review of your case for the third time, and the Supreme Court has interviewed the lawyer for the complaint for the second time, but there has been no substantial progress.
Your case is undoubtedly an unjust case, Phoenix Satellite TV and Oriental Satellite TV, two high-rated television stations, have done TV programs, have revealed the truth clearly, and have long announced it to the world. The extensive reporting and in-depth analysis of this case by the print and online media need not to be said.
However, what is the use of media reports, what is the use of lawyers running, in the eyes of many people, a hundred reports and defense statements are not as good as the leaders' instructions. Nie Shubin's case has been reported more than 400 times before and after, if it is not the national leader who has made up his mind to rehabilitate, what is the use? Perhaps a person with a low position can stop the rehabilitation of an unjust case, drag it on for three years and five years, or even drag it out quietly. I am not saying that there are no good people in the system, in fact, there are many good people, if there are no good people, the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate will not file a case for review, and then repeatedly postpone, rather than directly rejecting; how can the Supreme Court video interview for the second time, and say that it will video again in three months? There are many good people, but we don't know where the problem is, a huge judicial dark box, so that the rehabilitation of unjust cases, completely rely on luck.
Zhichao, you are innocent. Mr. Chen Guangzhong, a leading figure in the field of criminal procedure law in China, said, "I think this case should not only be retried, but also rehabilitated. He told me that even in the Nie Shubin case, he only said that it was a "suspected unjust case", but his case against you was so affirmatively and directly said that it was an unjust case. There are also legal scholars such as Zhang Jianwei, Chen Yongsheng, and Li Fenfei, who have pointed out many doubts in this case. But in the eyes of some people, scholars say that it is useless, and they do not read the media reports at all, not even the case file, and directly say that this case is no problem. No wonder your lawyer shoots up and yells at the screen. It is no wonder that the lawyer who was originally assigned to "sing red face" could not help but quarrel with some people.
At the end of last year, I was just worried that this case would not drag on for too long to be rehabilitated, and at this moment, I began to worry about whether this case could be rehabilitated. I want to look up at the sky and sigh, look for answers in the sky, I want to ask the earth, what else can I think, what else can I do, to seize that last glimmer of hope, to save a person who has spent his youth in prison.
The best youth of life, just spent in prison, I am anxious for you, but many people are indifferent. In their view, your youth, your freedom, is not as important as their face, and it is not worth mentioning. I remember your mother telling me that many of the judges who received her read the verdict and said, "This is not your son's doing, but it can only be so." In their view, the dignity of the law is not worth mentioning, the search for the truth is irrelevant, fairness and justice are even more floating clouds, and ruling the country according to law is purely a dream, such a muddled judge, what professional sense of honor, what faith in the rule of law, what value pursuit is there in life?
If the law allows, I'd really like to go in and swap you out, even if it's just for a day. Let your mother and son be reunited, even if it is just a headache and cry. Let you bathe in a warm ray of sunshine and breathe in the air of freedom! Really, I really do, but I can't do it.
So, at this time of greeting the old and welcoming the new, I can only write this empty dedication to you!
I can only tell you that although my strength is incomparably small, as long as you are not free, I will never give up!
The two sessions of the CPPCC National Committee spoke out, and the Supreme Court filed a case for review
Fast forward to 2017, before the national "two sessions" were convened, lawyer Wang Dianxue consulted with me on whether to look for NPC deputies and CPPCC members to pay attention to Zhang Zhichao's case. As soon as he said it, I immediately thought of Professor Hou Xinyi.
I remember that before the second seminar on Zhang Zhichao's case was held at the end of April 2016, I invited Professor Hou Xinyi. He said that he is now a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and it may not be appropriate to participate in such a case-by-case seminar, but he can give him Zhang Zhichao's materials, and he will forward them to the Supreme Court.
After consulting with lawyer Wang Dianxue, I contacted Professor Hou Xinyi, who said that he could wait for the two sessions to convene and go to the hotel where the committee members were stationed to give him materials.
In March 2017, during the two sessions, lawyer Wang Dianxue and I went to the resident hotel of Member Hou Xinyi and handed him the materials carefully prepared by lawyer Wang Dianxue on the proposal for retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case.
Before the end of the two sessions, Member Hou Xinyi took the initiative to tell me that he had already submitted his opinion to the Supreme Court on the Zhang Zhichao case, and the materials were also transferred to the Supreme Court, and said that the Supreme Court would definitely reply to the opinions raised by cppcc national committee members.
In early May 2017, the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate notified two lawyers to suspend the review of Zhang Zhichao's case and transfer the case file to the Supreme People's Court. Their explanation was that because the Supreme People's Court was likely to file and review Zhang Zhichao's case, they decided to transfer the case file to the Supreme Court and had to suspend the review of Zhang Zhichao's case. It was also stressed that a "suspension" was not a "termination" and could be resumed in the future.
However, I am very worried that after the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate suspends the review, the Supreme Court will not file and review Zhang Zhichao's case, so is it not that the previous achievements of the chicken and the egg have been abandoned, and our two or three years of efforts have been wiped out?
Under the heavy doubts, I had a cold and cough. I'm usually in good health, and I basically don't even have a cold.
After 2015, I caught a cold three times, all because of Zhang Zhichao's case. The first time was at the end of April 2016, when the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate's six-month deadline for filing and reviewing Zhang Zhichao's case was approaching, once was this time in May 2017, and the later one was the fifth extension of the Shandong Higher People's Court in May 2019.
All three times happened in May, which is also a coincidence. Am I more likely to catch a cold in May?
Whenever I couldn't sleep at night worried about this case, I would talk to lawyer Wang Dianxue on the phone the next day, and Wang Dianxue reassured me again and again that it should be fine, and the Supreme Court should file and examine the case, looking confident.
But I later heard his assistant say that during that time, whether he was on a business trip in Baotou or in Shenyang, Wang Dianxue always looked like he was worried and unguarded, and as an assistant, they didn't know what was going on. Later, I understood that he was also worried about Zhang Zhichao's chicken flying egg beating.
Looking back now, Wang Dianxue himself was also anxious about Zhang Zhichao's case, I still had to disturb him every three to five minutes, and he also pretended to comfort me with confidence, and it was really not easy for him!
Lawyers are like this, even if they are sometimes powerless to do anything about the case, at least they must play a psychological comforting role for the parties and their families, and provide them with good words to provide them with spiritual comfort, so that they are not so anxious and sad.
Fortunately, not long after, the Supreme People's Court conducted a video interview with Zhang Zhichao's case for the third time and decided to formally file and review Zhang Zhichao's case.
A stone in our hearts has finally landed!
After the news of the Supreme Court's filing and review of Zhang Zhichao's case broke, in May and June 2017, China Youth Daily, Law and Life, Huashang Daily, The Paper, Interface News, Finance and Economics and other media once again focused on reporting On Zhang Zhichao's case. For example, "Law and Life" reporter Zhang Yiyu published "11 Years of Fog, Zhang Zhichao's Campus Rape and Murder Case Entered the Vision of the Supreme People's Court", "Caijing" reporter Xiong Pingping published "12 years ago middle school student rape and murder case is doubtful, reviewed by the Supreme Court", and so on, and so on.
Later, we learned that after the Supreme Court filed and reviewed the case of Zhang Zhichao, it specially sent a judge to Shandong to investigate, interrogated Zhang Zhichao, interrogated witnesses Wang Xubo and Yang Tongzhen, conducted on-the-spot investigation of the case, and was convinced that Zhang Zhichao's case was indeed an unjust case, and only then decided to instruct the Shandong Higher People's Court to retry it.
Dai Rui found that the decision to retry was ordered, and the Shandong Higher People's Court delayed the opening of the court
At the end of 2017, the retrial of the Jilin Jin Zhehong case was changed to acquittal, and the media once again focused on unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. There is still no news on Zhang Zhichao's case.
At the end of January 2018, when combing through the reports of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases in recent years, the cover reporter Dai Rui found the decision of the Supreme People's Court of Shandong Province published on December 28, 2017, instructing the Shandong Provincial High People's Court to retry Zhang Zhichao's case, and sent me a message to seek verification. At this time, neither Zhang Zhichao's two lawyers, Zhang Zhichao himself and his mother Ma Yuping, nor me knew that the Supreme Court had ordered a retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case.
Upon hearing the news, Ma Yuping and two lawyers hurriedly contacted the supreme court judge and learned that the supreme court had made a decision to order a retrial on November 16, 2017, and entrusted the Shandong High Court to deliver the decision to Zhang Zhichao himself. When I asked the Shandong Higher People's Court again, it replied that the Shandong Higher People's Court had not yet received the Supreme Court's order to retry the decision.
Dai Rui published a report titled "The SPC Ordered the Retrial of Zhang Zhichao's Case, 12 Years Ago Where He Was Accused of Raping and Murdering a Female Classmate," and since then, like Lu Yijie, he has followed and reported every bit of progress in Zhang Zhichao's case.
Other media reporters followed suit, and the news of the Supreme Court's order to retry Zhang Zhichao's case was spread among major media.
On February 5, 2018, Ma Yuping finally got the Supreme Court's retrial decision from the Shandong Higher People's Court, and when she told Zhang Zhichao the news during the prison visit, Zhang Zhichao cried with joy.
Shortly thereafter, the Shandong Higher People's Court formed a collegial panel to begin the retrial.
Shortly thereafter, under the introduction of lawyer Wang Dianxue, lawyers Liu Zhimin and Wang Chaoyong of Beijing Jingshi Law Firm became Wang Guangchao's lawyers and also participated in the defense of Zhang Zhichao's case.
Originally, everyone was very optimistic, who knows, the retrial session was postponed again and again, and the Shandong Higher People's Court has postponed it 6 times.
During the fourth extension, the two lawyers, Li Xun and Wang Dianxue, had a deep communication with the judges handling the case of the Shandong Higher People's Court, saying that the extension was repeated in a row, which obviously violated the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law. The judge of the Shandong High Court explained that this was the last extension and said they were ready for the trial.
But in May 2019, the two lawyers received a fifth extension notice. The judge handling the case of the Shandong Higher People's Court said that the court is ready for the hearing, but the hearing is not a matter for the court alone, and all aspects need to be prepared.
Li Xun and Wang Dianxue then applied to the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate for procuratorial supervision. The procurator handling the case of the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate met with two lawyers and gave some reasons: The Shandong Provincial Procuratorate has already made a report to the Supreme People's Procuratorate on Zhang Zhichao's case, but the Supreme Procuratorate has not yet approved it; there are still many problems in Zhang Zhichao's case that have not been clearly investigated, and it is necessary to continue to investigate. He also said that it is difficult to say how long the Shandong Provincial Procuratorate will still need to investigate.
Upon learning of this news, Ma Yuping and the two lawyers reported the situation to the Supreme Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, hoping to promote the early retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case.
At the beginning of May, Ma Yuping came to Beijing, and I accompanied her to the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Supreme People's Court to reflect on the delay in holding the trial after the retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case.
For me, it was the most heart-wrenching moment in the 5 years of Zhang Zhichao's case, which had obviously been filed and retried, but it had been delayed for two years, and I did not know when it would be delayed. Zhang Zhichao has turned 30 years old, and his youth is about to be spent in prison, and we can't wait any longer!
On May 21, 2019, Red Star News reporter Zhang Yanliang published "The retrial of the "Zhang Zhichao Case" was postponed five times, and his mother reflected to the two supremes that the case had been delayed for a long time", revealing the delay in the retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case.
WeChat group seminar was held, Professor Chen Yongsheng "one foot in the door"
In June, I decided to organize an academic seminar on "Why Retrial Cases Are Difficult to Retrial" and invited some legal scholars to discuss the delay in retrial of cases such as Zhang Zhichao in Shandong and Li Jiangong in Xinjiang.
Zhang Jianwei, Chen Yongsheng, Xu Xin, Tong Zongjin, Ye Zhusheng, Zheng Shipeng, Xingjiang, Luo Jinshou, Wang Qing, Wang Chunli and other legal scholars, together with lawyers such as Mao Lixin, Wang Zhaohua, Zhang Yupeng, Lei Gang, Wu Zhirui, fan Chen, participated in the discussion, and the four lawyers representing Zhang Zhichao's case also spoke, and everyone studied the prospects of Zhang Zhichao's case together. Lu Yijie, the reporter who first reported on Zhang Zhichao's case, had successfully transformed into a trainee lawyer at this time and also participated in the discussion.
In the view of Professor Zhang Jianwei, executive director of the China Criminal Procedure Law Research Association and deputy dean of the Law School of Tsinghua University, even if the protracted and marathon appeal is finally successful, the parties are often exhausted and have gone through a lot of suffering. But what is puzzling is that in addition to the difficulty of retrial, there is also difficulty in trial. Even if the retrial procedure is initiated, the trial of some retrial cases has been twisted and turned, and the resolution has been delayed for a long time. One of the parties seems to be walking through an unknown length of tunnel, with no end in sight. This is the difficulty of judgment. Therefore, do not think that the retrial procedure has started and get on the ride. The case has not been heard, and before the verdict has been rendered, there is no need to look at the flag and think that there is good news while sitting.
"It is not difficult for Mo Yan to go down the mountain, and he will earn the love of pedestrians." Entering the circle of ten thousand mountains, a mountain is spared a mountain. Professor Zhang Jianwei quoted the poems of the Southern Song Dynasty poet Yang Wanli, which very vividly illustrated the practical dilemma of retrial.
"Retrial is a difficult door to open." Professor Zhang Jianwei said, "It can be roughly divided into two manifestations: difficult to start and difficult to judge. "It is said that once a retrial is initiated, the trial should not be difficult, because it is difficult to start the retrial procedure without strong evidence and strong facts as a basis. In other words, once the retrial procedure is initiated, it means that the judicial organs have formed a clear understanding of the "indeed error" of the original judgment. After the retrial is initiated, the handling of the case is like a downhill car, and it should be relatively smooth. However, it is true that some cases seem to have entered a "black hole" after the retrial is initiated, and it is difficult to understand and accept that the result of a trial cannot be produced for a long time, and even the trial process has been suspended for a long time.
The 34th issue of Democracy and the Rule of Law magazine in mid-September 2019 featured a series of reports titled "Why Retrial Is Difficult?" This group of reports reported on Zhang Zhichao's case for the fourth time in a larger space, pointing out that the delay in hearing the case was abnormal.
In the past five years, "Democracy and the Rule of Law" has mentioned Zhang Zhichao's case many times in its comprehensive reports on unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.
Since then, the editorial department of the Democracy and Legal Affairs Society has also sent a letter to the Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate, pointing out that the postponement of the trial of Zhang Zhichao's case is abnormal.
After the seminar, in late September, Professor Chen Yongsheng was invited to participate in the exchange activities invited by the Supreme Court to invite well-known domestic criminal procedure law scholars to participate in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, and when it was his turn to speak, he talked about Zhang Zhichao's case at a very large length, asking "the Supreme Court has ordered a retrial for almost two years, why has the Shandong Higher People's Court not held a trial", and said, "Zhang Zhichao's case did not identify the victim's vaginal secretions, and rape was convicted." His statement has aroused great concern from the Supreme Court.
It should be said that Professor Chen Yongsheng's speech has aroused the great attention of the Supreme Court, and i don't know whether the Supreme Court has therefore demanded that the Shandong Higher People's Court hold a hearing as soon as possible, but it must have aroused the attention of the Chinese court system to the delay in holding the hearing after the retrial of Zhang Zhichao's case was filed. For Zhang Zhichao's final rehabilitation, this speech played a key role in "one foot at the door".
The pretrial conference was held in Luzhong Prison, and Zhang Zhichao's case finally dawned
On October 12, 2019, the Shandong Higher People's Court held a pretrial conference on Zhang Zhichao's case in ZiboLuZhong Prison, and Zhang Zhichao's retrial finally dawned.
At 9 a.m. that morning, I watched Zhang Zhichao's retrial defense lawyers Li Xun and Wang Dianxue, Wang Guangchao, his retrial defense lawyers Liu Zhimin and Wang Chaoyong, and Zhang Zhichao's mother Ma Yuping enter Luzhong Prison to attend another pretrial conference convened by the Shandong Provincial High People's Court.
Before they entered, a white van entered Luzhong Prison, and the people in the car came down one after another, and Ma Yuping recognized that there was a vice president of the Shandong Higher People's Court and several judges who had received her many times.
After they entered, another white van entered Luzhong Prison, and the people in the car came down one after another, and I recognized that there was a deputy procurator general of the Shandong Procuratorate and two prosecutors.
I stood outside the gate of Luzhong Prison, imagining what procedures were going on in the pre-trial conference inside, what judges, prosecutors, and lawyers were all exchanging, and at the same time coming up with a poem.
"It is difficult to calm the injustice, and the more dangerous and obstructed, the more it climbs." The fool did his best to move the mountain, and justice did not manifest itself and it was not repaid in the end. ”
This pre-trial conference did not come easily.
Since february 8, 2018, when the Shandong Provincial High Court formed a collegial panel to retry Zhang Zhichao's rape and Wang Guangchao's cover-up case, the Shandong Higher People's Court has extended the trial period for the case for six consecutive times.
We look forward to the retrial and the early delivery of the verdict! Zhang Zhichao's mother, Ma Yuping, is eager to see through, and several lawyers and many of our media who care about reporting on this case are also anxious!
The pretrial conference was not long, only an hour and a half, and at 10:30 a.m., the lawyers came out. I was told that the pre-trial meeting went well, and the judge concluded by saying that both the prosecution and the defense were sane and that the atmosphere was harmonious.
Hopefully, this sanity and harmony will continue until the trial and the final verdict is pronounced.
We just want to redress an unjust case and will never target anyone. As long as you no longer deliberately obstruct the rehabilitation of unjust cases, we do not want to see you more, we will not have the slightest interest in you, and I hope that I will not think of you again in this life.
The lawyers were very busy, taking taxis to the airport and the high-speed rail station, running their own things, and then going to other cases, other things. I decided to stay and have lunch with Wang Guangchao and Ma Yuping's eldest sister, because last night I first met Wang Guangchao, the so-called "harboring criminal" in Zhang Zhichao's case, and of course I had to interview him before I was willing.
Wang Guangchao said earlier that he would like to ask Zhang Zhichao why he was mentioned. But after 14 years, I saw Zhang Zhichao again at the pre-trial meeting, and just nodded my head and said, "You have to take care of yourself inside." ”
Wang Guangchao's academic performance in that year was one of the best in the whole grade, because Zhang Zhichao's case was involved, locked up for 13 months, no longer studied after being released, ran to work in other places, and is now a long-distance truck driver, and his life's fate has been changed by this case.
He should resent Zhang Zhichao, but he just said "take care". He knew that it was not Zhang Zhichao who should really be resented, but the creator of the unjust case and the adjudicator of perverting the law. You are not handling a case, but someone else's life, and public prosecutors and law practitioners should really remember this sentence.
Wang Guangchao repeatedly told his lawyer in the detention center that he had done nothing, but the lawyer told him that he could be sentenced to a suspended sentence for defending his guilt.
What kind of lawyer is this? He entrusted someone to bring a message to his family to ask for a change of lawyer, a change of barrister, his parents were farmers, and the people of Shandong were born afraid of officials, but finally chose to let him come out quickly and confess guilt and probation against his will. If China were a country ruled by law, would there be so many human tragedies caused by the judiciary?
Wang Guangchao is already a father of three children, and it can be seen that he is a taciturn person.
Sister Ma Yuping did not look happy at all, her spirit was atrophied, and her face was still clouded. I kept comforting her, and I said, this time it's true, there's hope! Your son is coming out.
She was still very worried, as long as she didn't see the five words "Zhang Zhichao is innocent", she would never be able to put her mind at ease.
She talked a lot about it, saying that if Li Xun, who was not a lawyer at Dayu Law Firm, took Zhang Zhichao's case next, she might have jumped off a building in Beijing that day. She had been looking at the tall buildings in Beijing, all the time.
On that day, lawyer Li Xun proudly took over Zhang Zhichao's case, which saved her.
Lawyer, sometimes you don't take the case, but a life.
Returning to Beijing that afternoon, I was immersed in joy.
At this pre-trial meeting, major media such as Cover News, Red Star News, and China Youth Daily reported on it.
Zhang Zhichao's case was rehabilitated, and all parties contributed to the promotion
On December 5, 2019, the Shandong Provincial Higher People's Court held a trial of Zhang Zhichao's case at the Zibo Intermediate People's Court, and the national media reported more, and the public opinion paid more attention to the case than the wave.
On this day, it snowed heavily in Zibo, and it began to fall at the time of the court, and the snow stopped after the court. Although I am a materialist, this heavy snow still makes me feel very emotional: it is difficult to redress unjust cases, but we still waited, waited for the day of Zhaoxue!
On January 13, 2020, the Shandong Provincial High People's Court acquitted Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao at the Zibo Intermediate People's Court, and the media report was unprecedented.
Only the Central People's Radio and Television Station, there are rule of law online, today's statement, Shandong reporter station and the Voice of China four-way reporters came to Zibo to report, Phoenix Satellite TV, Oriental Satellite TV have video reports, China Youth Daily, the surging news, interface news, Red Star News, cover news, upstream news, etc. are all tracked and reported on various media platforms such as paper media, online media, douyin, Kuaishou, etc., from the announcement of the verdict to Zhang Zhichao's homecoming, from Zibo to Linshu, which lasted for several days. Today's headlines and Tencent also sent staff to Linshu to record Zhang Zhichao's return home.
Many media reporters also said that they also maintained a strong interest in the follow-up state compensation in Zhang Zhichao's case and Zhang Zhichao's future work and life.
Cover news, Red Star News and other media also interviewed the Linshu County Public Security Bureau and other units, hoping that the case of that year can restart the investigation, catch the real culprit, and return the deceased Gao Ting a justice, but also let Zhang Zhichao's case be completed!
Zhang Zhichao's case can finally obtain a fair verdict, and the media's role in promoting it is indispensable!
On May 25, 2020, Zhou Qiang, president of the Supreme People's Court, and Zhang Jun, chief procurator of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, respectively made a report on the work of the Supreme People's Court and the work of the Supreme People's Procuratorate to the Third Session of the 13th National People's Congress. Zhang Zhichao's case was written into the "two supremes" report.
In the chapter on "Strengthening Judicial Safeguards for Human Rights", the work report of the Supreme People's Court proposes that courts at all levels have retried and rejudged 1,774 criminal cases in accordance with trial supervision procedures, and that courts in Shandong and other courts have corrected major unjust, false and wrong cases such as Zhang Zhichao in accordance with the law.
The work report of the Supreme People's Procuratorate pointed out that the procuratorial committee of the Supreme People's Procuratorate discussed the "Zhang Zhichao rape case", believing that the evidence of the original prosecution and judgment was insufficient, and the principle of never having suspected guilt should be implemented, and supported the Shandong procuratorial organs in proposing an opinion on changing the verdict of innocence.
Zhang Zhichao's case has been rehabilitated, and many people who are still being wronged want me to provide them with a little advice on what to do to redress the unjust case.
I would like to say that in China, the rehabilitation of an unjust, false and wrongly decided case requires the excellent situation of governing the country according to law, the judicial organs to be loyal to the law and have the courage to correct mistakes, the persistence of the parties and their relatives, and the participation of many non-governmental forces, especially the attention, promotion and support of legal scholars, defense lawyers and media journalists for the rehabilitation of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. Through all the cases that have been rehabilitated since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, they have proved that they are an important driving force for the rehabilitation of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.
Zhang Zhichao's case is a typical unjust case that brings together legal scholars, defense lawyers and media journalists to promote rehabilitation.
There is no unjust case in the world that can be rehabilitated. Objectively speaking, unjust cases that can really be redressed are rare, and it is really a few in 10,000 probabilities. An unjust case cannot be rehabilitated without the persistence of the parties.
In addition to civil legal scholars, lawyers and media reporters, as well as the parties, we cannot deny the decisive role of the judicial organs in the rehabilitation of unjust cases. Zhang Zhichao's case was able to rehabilitate Zhaoxue because of the Supreme Court, the Shandong Higher People's Court, and the Shandong Procuratorate, many judges and procurators with consciences, and without these conscientious people, it would be difficult to start any procedure. There are a large number of judges, prosecutors and people's police in the system, who are upright people who want to redress unjust cases. We must not deny these people, because in the end, the judicial organs will have to rehabilitate you.
My advice to the wrongdoers is that you have suffered grievances, you have demanded redress, and you hope that the Chinese judiciary will return your innocence. This is a very legitimate right of a person, and no one can take away this right. However, you must also be mentally prepared that you cannot be rehabilitated. Redressing unjust cases cannot be regarded as a major part of life. If you say that I am a person who lives to redress unjust cases and does nothing else, I don't think it is very good.
I don't quite agree with redressing unjust cases as the main content of life. A wronged person should still have a normal life, a normal job, and a basic living guarantee. On such a basis, we should promote the rehabilitation of our own unjust cases, do not put the cart before the horse, and do not let the redress become the main axis of life. Otherwise, you put a lot of pressure on others, and others will not dare to help you.
No matter how much suffering there is, you should not deliberately show suffering. In the process of being a reporter and reporter, I have also been bullied by various people, and I have experienced many difficulties and setbacks, and even pain. But I never show this, and if you always show this, doesn't that mean you are a weak person? You can present the case appropriately, but don't always show suffering. You still have to give people a sunny, healthy image, so that it is easier to attract attention and get more help from more people.
I think the most important thing is to think about your lifestyle, to prepare for the worst, and to have the best expectations. Prepare for the worst and the best at the same time. We must establish our own way of life, such a main axis is determined, and then put the redress in the appropriate position. Neither give up nor make it the main content of life.
If you want to think clearly about a truth, it is a matter of course. When the various factors for the rehabilitation of a case are not yet available, it may not be effective no matter how hard you try. Maybe you sow a lot of seeds and you don't get anything. The rehabilitation of unjust cases can only be guided by the situation and will come to fruition.
You certainly can't do it without trying, but you don't necessarily have to do it if you try, and you must have such a basic judgment. I have also advised many clients, such as a pair of elderly people, who found me through friends.
His son was sentenced to ten years and has served five years in prison. I advised them to go back and stop running around, because they were too old, and it might not mean much to run like this, and the son's business would wait for the son to come out and run by himself. A lot of the parties, I persuaded them to go back.
Chen Xiaying's case, Xu Jinlong's case, Zhang Zhichao's case, Li Jiangong's case... It seems that I have also promoted the rehabilitation of several unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. But I didn't push it alone, every unjust case has countless people pushing it together, I just played a little bit of a role, and may not necessarily really play a role. It's just that my profession has made my personal appearance rate relatively high, and I have unexpectedly gained some popularity, but in the whole process, I don't know why I am famous, and I don't know what I am going to do when I become famous. Even if I push for these successful cases, there are many accidental factors, and it is not necessarily successful if I try to succeed.
The Zhang Zhichao case was undoubtedly a peak of my life, and I unexpectedly received an honor that was very disproportionate to my efforts. But honor is temporary, virtue is eternal. In September 2020, I resigned from the Democracy and Legal Affairs Society of the China Law Society and came to Beijing Dayu Law Firm. I have changed the track of life, hoping to accumulate new virtues on the new track.
Zhang Zhichao may hope that his image as a wronged person can gradually be forgotten by people, so that he can start his new life without burden. After all, he is only in his early 30s, the road of life is still very long, and the future happy life needs to work hard in an ordinary life!
But I believe that Zhang Zhichao's case should be remembered for a long time. Remember that in the time of up to 5 or even 10 years, there is a group of people who have been inspired by the dream of the rule of law that they longed for in their hearts, actively and diligently promoted the rehabilitation of an unjust case, saved a teenager who was unjustly imprisoned for 15 years at the age of 15, touched themselves, and also touched thousands of people!
Biography: Li Meng, born in July 1971 in Jining City (now Ulanchabu City), Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Ulanchabu League Hospital. After the grassland grew to the age of 6, he moved back to his ancestral hometown of Huangpi County, Hubei Province (now Huangpi District, Wuhan City) with his parents, finished primary and secondary schools, and began to attend college in the department of Chinese of Hubei University in 1989. After graduating from university in 1993, he enlisted in the army in a certain department of the People's Liberation Army Navy in Beijing Chinese, where he successively served as a cadet, assistant lecturer, lecturer (full battalion position), and won the rank of major professional and technical colonel of the Navy. In 2005, he transferred to the Democracy and Legal Affairs Society of the China Law Society, serving as an editor, reporter, and deputy director of the interview department. His daily work is mainly to interview the news of the rule of law, and he has made great contributions to the rehabilitation of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, food safety, and fiscal and tax legislation. In 2020, he resigned from public office and became the director of operations of Beijing Dayu Law Firm. There are more than ten works such as "The Biography of Tao Yuanming" and "Reorganizing the Old Mountains and Rivers (Mao Zedong 1949-1962)", the novel "Human Body Lesson", the historical reading "Twilight of the Empire", and "Shooting the Case about the Forbidden City".