On December 14, 2017, Wang Xin (pseudonym), a woman from Leshan, Sichuan Province, was killed while running in Jiazhou Greenheart Park in Leshan City, and upstream news learned from Leshan police that criminal suspect Li Jian was arrested and arrested.
The vehicle carrying defendant Li Jian drove away from the Leshan Intermediate Court. Photography / Hu Lei
On the afternoon of October 24, the Leshan Intermediate People's Court held a hearing on the case, and Li Jian replied to the crimes of robbery, homicide and theft charged by the Leshan Municipal People's Procuratorate, saying that he knew the deceased Wang Xin before the incident, and that he had agreed to meet in Leshan Luxin Park on the same day, and then the facts of murder and theft occurred. When asked by the prosecutor, the collegial panel and the defender about how to contact the deceased Wang Xin in normal times, Li Jian repeatedly said that he would not respond, and the prosecution and the court reminded him that this was a manifestation of unrepentance. At the end of the trial, Li Jian also expressed his apologies to the deceased Wang Xin and his family, "not accepting a sentence other than the death penalty."
Wang Mingao, the father of the victim Wang Xin, told the upstream news reporter (weChat: shangyounews) that although he entrusted a lawyer to participate in the trial as an agent ad litem, he did not submit a request for civil compensation, hoping that the court could sentence Li Jian to death.
Prosecutors charged: suspected of robbery, intentional homicide, theft
The highly publicized trial was held at 3 p.m. on the 24th in the grand courtroom of the Leshan Intermediate Court. Before the trial, a large number of citizens gathered at the entrance of the courthouse, ready to enter the courtroom to observe.
The upstream news reporter learned that Li Jian did not have a family member to participate in the trial on the same day, and Li Jian's legal aid lawyer said that Li Jian had clearly stated that he did not want to contact his family, and Li Jian's family had not contacted the defense lawyer to communicate the case.
Before the trial, Wang Xin's parents were interviewed by the media. Photography / Hu Lei
After the trial, the upstream reporter noticed that Li Jian had been watching the direction of Wang Xin's parents in the auditorium after entering the courtroom, until he turned his head to observe Wang Xin's parents after entering the defendant's seat, until he was corrected by the judicial police. Wang Xin's father did not say a word in the audience. Wang Xin's mother had been in tears when she heard the prosecution describe the details of the case, and ran out of a pack of tissues after the trial.
Li Jian was in a very good mental state and was able to fully understand and react to the presiding judge's instructions.
Li Jian said in court that he refused to accept the defense lawyer appointed by the Leshan Legal Aid Center, saying that he was "more familiar with the facts of the case", but the collegial panel rejected his request after deliberation.
The Leshan Municipal People's Procuratorate alleged that at about 17:00 on December 14, 2017, Wang Mouxin set off from the Qixing Haitang Community in Da jungle Lane, Central District, Leshan City, to take a walk on the Green Heart Loop, and met defendant Li Jian between a bowl of water and a bridge cave. In the process of talking, Li Jian saw the gold bracelet on the wrist of the victim Wang Xin, saw the money, threatened Wang Xin to hand over the gold bracelet, let him leave, when the victim left seven or eight meters away, Li Jian found that the victim took out his iPhone 8 plus mobile phone, thinking that it had signs of alarm, he chased forward to snatch the victim's mobile phone, because he was afraid of being discovered by passers-by, he coerced the victim into the deep part of the path inside the green heart ring, and then asked the victim to cancel the mobile phone id and tell him the lock screen password. Wang Xin took advantage of Li's lack of preparation to push him down the slope and ran away, Li Jian quickly climbed up to catch up with the victim, pressed him to the ground, and then Li Jian asked the victim not to call the police. Until about 1:00 a.m. on December 15, Li Jian once again agreed to the victim's departure, and when he found Wang Xin desperately running in the direction of the highway, Li Jian once again thought that the victim was going to call the police, immediately chased after him, and hit the back of the victim's head with his mobile phone to cause him to fall to the ground.
In order to prevent the crime from being exposed, Li Jian planned to dig a pit for the victims to bury. When looking around for the tool to dig the pit, Li Jian found that Wang Xin still had signs of life, and hit Wang Xin's head several times with a stone, causing him to slide into the ditch next to him, after which Li Jian used the tools he found to dig a pit to bury the victim. After cleaning up the scene, he fled the scene with a mobile phone, a gold bracelet, a gold ring, and three gold stud earrings.
The Leshan procuratorate held that the facts of defendant Li Jian's crime were clear and the evidence was indeed sufficient, constituting the crimes of robbery, intentional homicide, and theft, respectively, and should be punished for several crimes at the same time.
Running trails near the park. Photography / Hu Lei
Refusal to repent: Suspect responds to questioning at trial "no response"
In response to the Leshan Municipal People's Procuratorate's allegations, Li Jian said in court that he had no objection to the fact of killing Wang Xin, but did not agree with the cause and process of the incident.
Li Jian told the court that he and Wang Xin met in January 2017, and on the afternoon of December 14, he and Wang Xin made an appointment to meet in The Green Heart Park through chat software, and then made a request for a loan, and only after the dispute arose did they murder Wang Xin.
The prosecutor asked About Li Jian's confession: What other company is Wang Xin working as an admissions teacher at a school in Leshan? Li Jian responded that Wang Xin also has a greening engineering company. Prosecutors immediately pointed out that Li Jian lied in court that Wang Xin's name is an environmental protection engineering company whose main business is to remove formaldehyde, rather than a greening engineering company.
Prosecutors, collegial panels and Li Jian's lawyers also asked several times in court what chat software Wang Xin and Li Jian communicated through. Li Jian had only one answer to this question, even after the judge's admonition that "the court should answer the question truthfully": not to respond.
The prosecution searched the mobile phone numbers in the names of Li Jian and his fiancée, but found no communication records with the victim, Wang Xin, and his relatives.
Li Jian explained that he contacted Wang Xin through another mobile phone number, and the prosecutor asked for this mobile phone number in court, but Li Jian's answer was still "no response" and refused to provide the number to contact Wang Xin.
The prosecutor who appeared in court said that Li Jian and Wang Xin did not know each other before the crime, and Li Jian lied that the purpose of the two acquaintances was to exonerate them.
There is no trace of Wang Xin's body buried. Photography / Hu Lei
According to the upstream news reporter, after Li Jian was arrested by the Leshan police, he once gave a detailed confession at the police office at least 5 times about how the two met for the first time that day and how to commit the crime, and after the prosecutor intervened, Li Jian changed his confession, saying that the two were on an appointment to meet and then borrow money, until the trial also insisted on this statement.
Li Jian explained the reason for changing the confession that he was "threatened" at the police office, and if he did not confess the crime, he would not release his fiancée who was asked to assist in the investigation at that time.
The procurator who appeared in court severely refuted Li Jian's statement, and the police gave Li Jian full humane treatment to the audio and video recording of the entire interrogation, the time and duration of the interrogation, etc., which conformed to the relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law, and there was no involuntary confession.
The upstream news reporter learned that at the pre-trial meeting of the case on October 19, Li Jian had applied to the collegial panel for the exclusion of illegal evidence, but the collegial panel rejected Li Jian's request, and all the evidence after review complied with the law.
Wang Xin's parents entrusted a litigation agent, Zhao Xin, to participate in the trial on the 24th.
Zhao Xin told the upstream news reporter that Wang Xin's parents did not file a specific civil litigation compensation request, but only entrusted a lawyer to participate in the trial on the same day as a litigation agent. For Wang Xin's elderly parents, the amount of compensation is no longer important, the top pillar daughter of the family is gone, no matter how much material compensation is meaningless, they only hope to kill people to pay for their lives, and give their daughter a fair justice.
At the final stage of the trial, Li Jian said that although he did not agree with the public security organs' investigation methods and the details of the prosecution's accusations, he was extremely sorry for the fact that Wang Xin was killed, hoped to pay for his life, and "agreed to the procuratorate's request for a heavy sentence and did not accept a sentence other than the death penalty." Li Jian's defense lawyer told the upstream news reporter that in the meeting before the trial, Li Jian put forward his wish to compensate Wang Xin's family, but because there was no participation of Li Jian's family, this work could not be promoted.
Sadness and weeping: The day my daughter was killed
During the trial, after hearing Li Jian say a few "no responses", some observers stood up and accused Li Jian of his cruelty, and Li Jian buried his head and was escorted out of the courtroom, which was completely different from when he entered the courtroom and looked at the auditorium. The victim's parents, Wang Mingao and Fan Jianying, were very angry at Li Jian's claim that they had known Wang Xin before the crime, believing that this was someone instigating exoneration, "This is obviously exonerating themselves, a 23-year-old, a 31-year-old, how can they know?" The circle of life is completely different, saying that knowing why not even a phone record? This is complete sophistry."
Photograph of the victim, Wang Xin, before his death.
After the daughter was killed, Wang Mingao's wife was in a very bad mental state, and her eyes were almost always in a free state, especially when she heard about her daughter, she would fall into abnormal grief, and the accident had been for almost ten months, and it had always been so.
As for the question of why there was no civil compensation request, Wang Mingao said that first of all, as a parent, the loss of their daughter is not something that can be compensated by any money, and only one request is to sentence the murderer to death, and there is nothing else to ask for. The suspect Li Jian is also unable to make compensation, and the court judgment is only a written number that cannot be enforced, which may provide an opportunity to mitigate Li Jian's punishment.
Wang Xin has a son, a daughter and two children, and the eldest daughter is 7 years old.
Wang Mingao recalled that when the children learned the news of their mother's death, they couldn't help but shed tears, "That day the younger son ran to me and asked me, what to do without my mother, I cried as soon as I heard it, and I couldn't help but say to them, you still have your father, grandparents, grandparents." Relatives also recalled that after the two children knew that their mother was gone, they were obviously not as lively as before, and their eyes showed the same melancholy as their grandmother.
Before the trial, upstream journalists once again came to the Green Heart Park where Wang Xin was killed. Due to the cold weather, there are not many citizens who come for a walk, but it is obvious that there are monitoring equipment and patrolling vigilantes at intervals.
Wang Xin's father, Wang Mingao, said that before his daughter's accident, he had the habit of walking in Green Heart Park every day after dinner, but now he has a headache when he thinks of the four words of Green Heart Park, which has become a sad park for their family.
Upstream journalist Hu Lei is from Leshan, Sichuan