The case of a man imprisoned for a murder he did not commit is a good example, perhaps the first public example, of the government, or those who acted on its behalf, doing a terrible wrong to an individual.

Now it is time for the victim to demand justice and get the highest amount of compensation a Chinese citizen has ever received from the authorities.

Because of police officers failing to follow legal procedures -- for example, by forcing a confession -- and interference by local government, a man named She Xianglin, 28 years old when convicted, was charged and convicted for murdering his wife.

He had spent almost 11 years in prison before being released a few days ago when his supposedly dead wife arrived back in her hometown.

Now, as She gets used to his freedom and begins the process of suing the government, Chinese legal experts are offering their opinions on what went wrong for this man in Central China's Hubei Province.

There is a lot of criticism of local government departments and justice officials.

First, police should take the blame, according to Professor Chen Xingliang, vice-president of the Law School of Peking University, because officers assumed She was guilty after a badly decomposed body was found, then tried to extract a confession by torture.

Prosecutors and judges failed to fulfil their obligation to adequately check the evidence, Chen pointed out. And, he said, interference from the local administration was also believed to be a key reason for the false conviction.

It has been reported that judgments made by the Jingshan County People's Court and the Jingmen Municipal Intermediate People's Court both followed decisions of the local administration at county and municipal level. Jingshan is a county in Jingmen, a city in Hubei.

She's wife Zhang Zaiyu disappeared in 1994 in Jingshan County in Central China's Hubei Province. Later that year, a female body was found near to where she lived. Her relatives assumed it was her and insisted her husband was the murderer. He was arrested and soon convicted.

The Jingmen Prefecture Intermediate People's Court originally gave She the death sentence in 1994. The defendant appealed to the Hubei Provincial High People's Court.

The high court withdrew the original judgment in 1995 saying there was not enough evidence. Five points of doubt were found.

For example, She talked of several different ways he had killed his wife. The high court believed it was possible that She's wife had merely left home, so transferred the case to the Jingmen Prefecture Intermediate People's Court for a new trial.

However, it was not until in 1996 that the Jingmen Municipal Party Committee of Political and Legislative Affairs decided that She would be tried again by Jingshan County People's Procuratorate at Jingshan County People's Court.

This decision was believed by experts to be an illegal one as the case should have been transferred to the Jingmen Municipal Intermediate People's Court, following a reform of the local government.

However, it was still the county-level court in Jingshan that sentenced She to 15 years in prison, despite inadequate evidence, in 1998. His appeal was turned down.

The turning point did not come until She's wife reappeared late last month. She said she had left her hometown because she was unhappy with her marriage. She went to another province and remarried there, also giving birth to a son. This was obviously more than enough to prove She's innocence.

Even though the Hubei Provincial High People's Court did the right thing overruling She's sentence in the first place, Professor Chen Xingliang of Peking University commented, "it still neglected its duty of supervising the lower courts."

In fact, he argued, "all institutions that were involved in the lawsuit committed errors. If only any department could have acted as a useful check, the man would not have been wronged for 11 long years." Police officers face prosecution for using torture to obtain She's confession. And other justice officials may also be disciplined.

Chen Guangzhong, a senior professor with the China University of Politics and Law, said criminal investigators had done a sloppy job and this was another reason for She's misfortune.

The female body was found months after She's wife disappeared, but local police claimed the body was Zhang's on the claim of her relatives.

"In fact, the body was decomposed and could not be identified. But local police still said it was She's wife without resorting to DNA tests," he said.

Without collecting other evidence, the police insisted on assuming it was She who killed his wife. "Procedurally speaking, this is definitely unacceptable," the professor said. It reflected the fact that local police were only interested in catching criminals and neglected the rights of innocent people.

He said lawyers should be present whenever a suspect is being questioned by the police, to avoid illegal acts like torture. He also urged the recording of each interrogation by police and said a record should be kept by the justice authority.

"The court is responsible for examining whether an oral confession is reached through torture," he stressed. He said the court must uphold the principle that a suspect is innocent until proved guilty. This principle was incorporated into Chinese Criminal Procedure Law in 1996.

Chen Guangzhong said She should be compensated according to the State Compensation Law adopted in 1994.

However, compensation is usually fixed depending on the average salary and does not include money for mental suffering. "I believe it is proper to compensate She also for his mental injuries. However, nothing laid down in law now," he said.

His views were echoed by Chen Xingliang, who added that She should also be compensated for the suffering of his family.

After She was imprisoned in 1994, his family tried hard to find evidence that the missing woman was still alive and She was innocent. She's mother discovered in 1995 that Zhang had apparently appeared once in Tianmen of Hubei Province.

Three villagers produced letters for the police to prove that Zhang stayed in their home for one night. But the police refused to accept the evidence. She's mother was even arrested in 1996 for "interfering with justice." The 54-year-old was imprisoned for nine months and died three months after her release.

She's elder brother was also jailed for 40 days after continuously appealing against She's imprisonment.

Even two villagers who told the police they had seen She's wife after her alleged death were jailed for more than three months.

She's daughter was forced to quit junior high school because of a lack of cash. "Our money was entirely used up on appeals and visits to higher authorities," the girl recalled.

Justice incomplete with mere 'not guilty' verdict

After 11 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit, 39-year-old Hubei farmer She Xianglin was pronounced "not guilty" yesterday.

It seems like a happy ending to a long ordeal.

She is fortunate in the sense that the death sentence he was first given was overturned in a retrial. Instead he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In another case, Nie Shubin, a 21-year-old farmer in Hebei Province, was sentenced to death in 1994 for rape and homicide. Almost 11 years after his execution, he was found innocent in January when the real culprit was arrested and pleaded guilty.

At least She has the chance to rebuild his life. But Nie does not, nor do the others, if any, who were wrongly deprived of the right to live in the name of the law.

While we celebrate She's belated "not guilty" verdict, we do not feel the usual ease when justice is done.

For one thing, She's case was not reviewed until after his wife, assumed murdered, suddenly appeared in her hometown 11 years after a decomposed body found near her home was assumed to be hers. Would She Xianglin have had the chance to prove his innocence if his wife had not re-emerged?

The judiciary's obligation to redress such a mistake should not be limited to a now self-evident "not guilty" judgment.

Nor should it be as simple as She getting some money in the form of State compensation.

It seems there were serious flaws in evidence and trial procedures.

Local authorities rushed to the conclusion that the decomposing corpse discovered in a local reservoir was She's missing wife's.

They never even bothered to conduct serious forensic examinations.

The murder charge was based solely on the coincidence of his wife's disappearance and the discovery of the corpse.

Nor did She's contradictory accounts of the alleged murder, four versions in total, which the provincial high court found insufficient for a death sentence, make the courts think about investigating further.

Nor did they look deeper when She's family found eyewitnesses who confirmed seeing his wife after the alleged murder.

Both She's mother and brother, who tried in vain to solicit clues for She's wife's whereabouts and appealed to higher authorities for justice, had suffered protracted police custody.

The neglect of both common sense and the law is beyond our imagination.

Now that She has formally been found innocent, there are lots of questions to be asked.

As She's wife is alive, we need to know whose body was found and what that woman died of.

Since She has exposed how torture was used during interrogation, we need to know if that truely happened.

We need to see those responsible for She's imprisonment punished.

Beside incompetence, we need to know whether corruption was involved in She's case.

Justice will remain incomplete until all these concerns are addressed in a proper manner.

Otherwise, there is no guarantee similar tragedies will not occur to other innocent citizens.

(China Daily April 14, 2005)