Zhao Zuohai, a villager in Henan Province, received a suspended death sentence in 1991 for killing his fellow villager after the two had a fight. Zhao had been jailed for almost 10 years when his alleged victim returned home. Zhao Zuohai was compensated 650,000 yuan (96,000 U.S. dollars) for the wrong jail.

Ma Dandan, a beauty salon worker in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province, was illegally interrogated in 2001 for 23 hours and then wrongly detained for 15 days on charges of prostitution. She asked for compensation of 5 million yuan (US$600,000), but was turned down by a local court and received a tiny compensation of only 74.66 yuan (US$9).

She Xianglin, from Hubei Province, spent 11 years in jail for "killing" his wife before being released in 2005 after his "victim" turned up alive. He received nearly 500,000 yuan (US$61,880) in compensation, including an amount for the arrest of his mother for trying to help his case – she later died while he was still in prison.