China reviews murder conviction 19 years after execution

JINAN - The Higher People's Court of East China's Shandong province announced on Tuesday that five judges are reviewing a rape-murder case 19 years after the convict was executed, as another man insists he is guilty.

The court is reviewing the case of Nie Shubin, executed in 1995 at the age of 21 for the 1994 rape and murder of a woman in Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang.

In 2005, Wang Shujin, 47, was apprehended by police for three unconnected rape-murder cases. During questioning, Wang claimed that he had raped and murdered a woman in a cornfield on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang in 1994 and that Nie was innocent. Hebei Higher People's Court, which approved the death penalty for Nie in 1995, did not believe his claim in a retrial last year and Nie's verdict still stands.

Wang's claims have raised public questions of judicial impartiality.

In a similar case, a teenager named Huugjilt from Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was found guilty of the rape and murder of a woman in a public toilet in the regional capital Hohhot on April 9, 1996 and sentenced to death in May 1996. He was executed on June, 1996. An alleged serial rapist and killer, Zhao Zhihong, confessed to the murder when he was arrested in 2005.

Huugjilt was acquitted on Dec. 15.