2014/12/31

The Washington Post December 29, 2014: In China, a rare criminal case in which evidence made a difference

This is a country where 99.9 percent of suspects are found guilty. Where authorities put to death more convicted criminals each year than the rest of the world’s countries combined.

A major reason so few are found innocent and so many are wrongfully convicted: forced confessions.

That’s how Nian Bin, a grocery owner from a small fishing island, ended up admitting eight years ago to a crime he says he did not commit.

Nian said police bound his hands and hung him from a window. They jammed slivers of bamboo between his ribs, tied books around his stomach to prevent bruising and took turns whaling on him with a hammer. The pain grew so intense that he bit down hard on his tongue in hopes he could sever it and die from bleeding or choking.

Then the officers threatened to interrogate his wife.

That’s when he agreed to confess to poisoning his neighbors and killing their two children.

[Read more: Chinese murder leaves tantalizing clues]

It would take four trials, three appeals and a review by China’s Supreme People’s Court during the next eight years for Nian to claw his way back from the realm of the 99.9 percent. But this fall, he became one of the few to ever cross that chasm and escape execution. more