Chinese ‘Murderer’ Freed After ‘Victim’ Turns Out Not To Be Dead

A Chinese man has been freed after spending 10 years in jail for a murder that he did not commit
that never actually took place.

Zhao Zuohai’s neighbor disappeared after the pair were involved in a physical altercation. When a headless, decomposed body was discovered a year-and-a-half later, police assumed it to be the neighbor and Zuohai was charged with the killing.

Now, it would be easy to blame the neighbor for letting Zuohai take the fall, but there is another twist to the story. You see, the fight between the pair was apparently a bad one – bad enough that the similarly named Zhao Zhenshang thought that he had killed Zuohai. So Zhenshang did what any normal firing squad fearing citizen would do, he went on the lam.

The mistake was uncovered when Zhenshang returned home to his village in Henan province to apply for welfare. Zuohai was spared serving out the remaining 19 years of his 29-year prison sentence (which he received after his death sentence was commuted).

A reasonable person might assume that the errors in the case had a lot to do with the methods of investigation. Zuohai’s conviction was based mainly on his confession, which was said to have been obtained under extreme duress. To be specific, Zuohai’s brother claimed that police extracted the confession by forcing their prisoner to drink chili-water and setting off fireworks above his head.

With the case happening in China, a few heads can be expected to roll – and the wheels of justice seem to be turning in that direction. The original judges are set to be punished and an investigation has been launched into the mistake that cost Zuohai 10 years and nearly claimed his life; cold comfort, perhaps, for a man who lost a decade – not to mention his wife, who remarried and his kids who were adopted by her new husband. [BBC]

Image: Inside a Chinese prison (Boston.com)