By Li Hongmei
A farmer in central China wrongly convicted of murder and rape is to receive nearly a million yuan (US$164,700) in state compensation.
Li Huailiang will get 788,227 yuan for having spent almost 12 years in jail and 200,000 yuan for mental anguish, a court in Pingdingshan, Henan Province, said yesterday.
Li was freed by the court on April 25, after it said the evidence against him was insufficient.
Li had sought up to 3.8 million yuan for the violation of his personal freedom, mental anguish, medical costs, loss of work and legal fees.
The murder and rape case dates back to the evening of August 2, 2001, when a 13-year-old girl, identified as Guo Xiaohong, left home to play but never came back. Two days later, the girl's partially nude body was found.
Police believed the girl was murdered and then raped and thrown into the river, the Beijing Times reported.
Li became the prime suspect just because he had passed by the crime scene and he was detained five days later.
Between 2001 and 2006, Li stood trial seven times and was given three different verdicts.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, death and then death with reprieve. But all three verdicts were ultimately overturned due to a lack of evidence.
Li said at one of the trials that the police had beaten him with a chain to force him to confess to the murder, the newspaper reported.
His lawyer said a blood sample found at the scene was of type O, while the victim had type A blood and Li had type AB.
A footprint was also found at the scene but Li wore bigger shoes, he added.
The farmer's case attracted wide attention after part of an old document was exposed by China Comment magazine in June 2012.
The document, signed in May 2004 by the girl's parents, was nicknamed a "death sentence guarantee," as the parents said in the agreement that they would not lodge complaints with higher authorities on the condition the court would impose capital punishment, at best, or at least a life sentence.
The court responded by saying that the agreement had no legal standing, adding that it was just an appeal from the victim's family without any signature from a judge.
