China Youth Daily Client Zibo, Shandong, January 13th (China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Liu Yan) this morning At 9 o'clock, the High People's Court of Shandong Province retrialed a rape and murder case of middle school students 15 years ago in the Criminal Tribunal of the Intermediate People's Court of Zibo City. Zhang Zhichao, who was sentenced to life imprisonment that year, was acquitted.
The Shandong Higher People’s Court found that the facts of the original trial were unclear and the evidence was insufficient, and announcing the revocation of the original judgment.
Zhang Zhichao is 31 years old this year. Before he was sentenced, he was the monitor of the 24th class in the first high school of Shandong Linshu No. 2 Middle School. In February 2005, he was believed by the police to rape and kill a schoolgirl in the washroom of the school building. The following year, Shandong Linyi Intermediate Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for rape. His classmate Wang Guangchao was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and three years’ probation for “false testimony and shelter”.
Today, Wang Guangchao was also acquitted.
In 2011, Zhang Zhichao and his mother Ma Yuping began to appeal. On May 27, 2015, the China Youth Daily published a report on "Misted Rape and Murder of Middle School Students" and was the first to disclose the case. Li Xun, a lawyer representing Beijing Dayu Law Firm, believed that the original conviction was only a confession without reliable physical evidence.
The first-instance verdict determined that the time of committing the crime was around 6:20, and the testimony of multiple witnesses showed that Zhang Zhichao participated in the flag-raising ceremony at 6:15 that day, and then began to participate in the playground running at 6:20, and at 6:35 Points back to the classroom. These testimonies were not reflected in the materials provided by the case handling agency of the first instance.
In addition, both Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao reported that they had been subjected to torture to extract a confession during the investigation stage before making a guilty confession, and they even dared not appeal in court.
In 2014, the Linyi City People’s Procuratorate issued a notice of review of criminal complaints and found that the original conviction was clear and the evidence was indeed sufficient, and that it did not meet the conditions for a protest, so it was not prosecuted. In October 2015, the People's Procuratorate of Shandong Province filed and reviewed the Zhang Zhichao case. The Supreme People's Court conducted three video interviews through the remote interview system on April 25, 2016, December 13, 2016, and May 2, 2017 to understand the circumstances of the case, and formally filed a case to review the rape and murder of Zhang Zhichao.
On November 16, 2017, the Supreme Law made a retrial decision after review and found that the rape of the defendant Zhang Mouchao caused death, and the fact that the other defendant Wang Mouchao sheltered him is unclear, and the main evidence exists. In contradiction, the Shandong Higher People’s Court was ordered to retry the case.
On December 5, 2019, the case was opened in the Zibo Intermediate People's Court. During the trial, the prosecutor's Shandong Provincial People's Procuratorate said that the existing evidence cannot be mutually confirmed and cannot form a chain of evidence for Zhang Zhichao's rape and murder. Evidence that has no or insufficient proving power shall not be used as the basis for a verdict. Therefore, the facts of the case are unclear and the evidence is insufficient. It is recommended that the Shandong Higher People's Court amend Zhang Zhichao's innocence according to law.
Zhang Zhichao’s mare, Ma Yuping, firmly believes that her son should not be "suddenly guilty", but completely innocent. Today, she brought Zhang Zhichao a full set of new clothes and new shoes to celebrate his "rebirth". In the next step, Zhang Zhichao's family and lawyers will apply for state compensation for him.
During his detention and sentence, Zhang Zhichao's grandfather, grandmother, grandma and father passed away one after another. Ma Yuping plans that after his son regains his freedom, he will first take a personal examination and take care of his body. Hope Zhang Zhichao can learn a technique in the future and return to society as soon as possible.
"I also hope to catch the real culprit as soon as possible and give the victim an explanation." Ma Yuping said.
延展读: see China Youth Daily report on May 27, 2015
Rape and murder of misty middle school students
Author | Lu Yijie Tian Rongjuan
Zhang Zhichao is about to spend his 26th birthday in prison.
10 years ago, this squad leader of the 24th class of the first high school of Linshu No. 2 Middle School in Shandong was identified as being near the scene, Thus involved in a whirlpool of rape and murder. The court finally found him guilty of rape and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He did not appeal.
However, after 5 years in prison, Zhang Zhichao filed a complaint, stating that he did not do the thing at all.
In the view of Zhang Zhichao's attorney, Li Xun of Beijing Dayu Law Firm and his team, the evidence of the original judgment is not solid. It was said that it was rape, but Zhang Zhichao’s semen was not extracted; there were three versions of why Zhang Zhichao stayed near the scene on the day of the incident; it was said that Zhang Zhichao used a woven bag to cover the upper part of the body, but the police could not explain the woven bag clearly. The source of...
The only physical evidence is a wooden stick-which is believed to be inserted into the anus of the victim's corpse-but for this small wooden stick, neither the victim's related substances nor the attempt to go Extract Zhang Zhichao's fingerprints.
The superior court rejected Zhang Zhichao's appeal. The staff of the Prosecution and Appeal Section of the Linyi People's Procuratorate also responded that the case was flawed in certain details, but it did not affect the conviction and sentencing.
The girl’s body was found in the abandoned toilet of the teaching building.
Zhang Zhichao’s mother still remembers that on February 12, 2005 was the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, Zhang Zhichao was taken by several policemen at home at more than 1 am go.
"The police asked his son, your name is Zhang Zhichao, and he asked about the date of birth. Later he asked me to get a big jacket, and when I came in and took the jacket out, they had already left." Zhang's mother reported to the China Youth Daily. Recall that the police said at that time, "I have something to ask him."
Zhang Zhichao never came back. A few days later, Zhang’s mother found out that her son’s accident was related to a girl named Feng Ting (pseudonym) in the same grade. The girl was studying in Class 20 of High School One and had been missing for a month. Her father was the legal representative of an enterprise in Linshu County.
In the impression of teachers and classmates, Feng Ting served as the recreational committee member of the class, and his academic performance was above average. She has a cheerful personality, has a wide range of friends, has many letters, and has some pen pals and netizens.
Mother Zhang has heard about the girl’s disappearance. Before the winter vacation, the school organized a parent meeting. After the meeting, Zhang’s mother took a taxi with several parents. There were still people in the car discussing the missing girl. "I don't know the girl's name or know it, and it has nothing to do with us." Mother Zhang did not ask much in the car.
As far as we know, the last time Feng Ting appeared in the sight of a friend was the early morning of January 10. A friend of Feng Ting's surname Wang told the police that she had lived at Feng Ting's house the night before, and that she rode Feng Ting to school early that morning.
The day is Monday. According to school regulations, a national flag raising ceremony will be held at 6:15, followed by running exercises. When the two arrived at the school gate, the assembly bell rang, and the girl surnamed Wang hurried to the east parking lot after entering the school gate. Feng Ting took the two textbooks and wallet from the basket and walked straight forward.
"I pushed the bike and walked more than ten meters away. I wanted Feng Ting to help me with the textbook, so I turned to look for her." The girl surnamed Wang said that she could not find Feng Ting anymore.
Where did Feng Ting go? This became a mystery at the time. The head teacher of Class 20 of Senior One told the police that he did not see Feng Ting in the team when the students were running exercises that day.
The morning self-study started at 6:35. After nearly two hours, the class teacher started the first class. He found that Feng Ting was not in the classroom, "I didn't ask, thinking she was not feeling well, her family took her to the doctor", because Feng Ting "has caught a cold in the past few days, often get injections and hang bottles, and often miss class." .
The teacher in charge did not know that the girl surnamed Wang failed to contact Feng Ting for a whole day, and Feng never went home.
Feng Ting's family rushed to the school to find someone less than 8 am the next morning. Afterwards, each class notified classmates to help find Feng Ting, and the school immediately spread about the missing girl.
However, there was no news from Feng Ting until the winter vacation at school.
At 14:00 on February 11, a school cleaner cleaned the washing room on the 3rd floor of the teaching building. She tried to enter a toilet that had been abandoned for months inside the washroom, but found that the lock could not be opened, so she found pliers and wrenches.
The lock of the toilet was opened, and the one who caught the eye was lyingThe woman's body was bare below her buttocks, and a woven bag stained with blood was placed above it. The school immediately called the police, and it was identified that this was Feng Ting who had been missing for a month.
Ten hours later, Zhang Zhichao, monitor of the 24th class of Senior One, quickly walked into the police's field of vision.
was alleged to have appeared at the door of the washing room involved
Zhang Zhichao was concerned by the police, one of the important reasons is that in the early morning of January 10, 2005, which was identified as the date of the incident, someone accused He appeared at the door of the washing room involved.
The washing room is located on the 3rd floor of the teaching building, and there is an abandoned toilet inside. Five or six meters north of the washroom is a dormitory housing 23 boys, including Feng Ting’s classmates Wang Xubo and Yang Tongzhen. Their classroom is on the second floor.
In the early morning of January 10, Wang Xubo and Yang Tongzhen asked for leave in the dormitory and did not participate in the flag raising ceremony or running exercises.
The testimony affirmed by the court’s verdict showed that Wang Xubo stated that at about 6:23, he heard a girl in the dormitory screaming "What are you going to do, help?" Then, he and Yang Tongzhen ran out of the dormitory and watched Two people stood at the door of the washroom.
According to Wang Xubo, one of them is Zhang Zhichao and the other is wearing glasses. Wang Xubo asked Zhang Zhichao what he was doing. The other party replied that he didn't do anything. Wang Xubo looked in the washroom door again. It was dark and he saw nothing.
However, none of Yang Tongzhen's testimony mentioned Zhang Zhichao at the door of the washroom. Even in the testimony of the verdict, Yang Tongzhen claimed that Wang Xubo was "joking with two men I don't know", but Yang and Zhang actually knew each other.
"I then asked them again,'Who called it just now', and they said,'There are female ghosts'. I asked them what they did, and they said,'There are beautiful women, it's okay, nothing is wrong' . I went back to the dormitory with Yang Tongzhen." Wang Xubo said.
Wang Xubo said that after he and Yang Tongzhen returned to the dormitory, they came out after 5 minutes, but they didn't see them anymore.
The scream was obviously considered by the police to be a distress signal sent by Feng Ting before his death. Zhang Zhichao, who was pointed out at the door of the washing room, also stepped into the whirlpool.
At 6:23, it is still school running time. Why did Zhang Zhichao appear on the third floor of the teaching building? A reporter from China Youth Daily found that comparing Zhang Zhichao's confession with Zhang Zhichao's classmate testimony, there are at least three versions.
A book of regrets signed by Zhang Zhichao shows that he bought a knife in the store to sharpen his pencil. On the way back to the dormitory, he remembered the contents of the pornographic book he bought. Floor washing room (note: "fourth floor" is the original text) in front of the door.
In Zhang Zhichao's many confessions to the police, he claimed that he got up late that day and did not catch up with the running exercises, so he stayed in the dormitory and read horror novels. After reading the description of the relationship between men and women in the book, he went up to the third floor, ready to go to the classroom of his class.
However, when interviewed by the police, four of Zhang Zhichao’s classmates all stated that Zhang Zhichao not only did not get up late that day, but also participated in the flag-raising ceremony before running exercises. Some students clearly remember Zhang Zhichao's position.
A detail is that the sports committee member of Zhang Zhichao’s class said that after participating in the flag-raising ceremony, many students in the class took off the jackets that they wore outside, and he asked Zhang Zhichao and another classmate to carry the jackets back classroom.
A reporter from China Youth Daily noticed in a trial transcript that these 4 testimonies were not shown by the public prosecutor.
Zhang Zhichao told the attorney Li Xun during the meeting that after returning to the classroom with a cotton jacket, he did not go to wash the door of the room, but went downstairs to the toilet. Because the toilet in the washroom has been disabled, the user was found to be deducted points.
Zhang Zhichao recalled to the lawyer that when he went downstairs to the bathroom, he saw Yang Tongzhen at the door of the second floor dormitory.
This is also confirmed by Yang Tongzhen with similar expressions. He said that after he and Wang Xubo came out of the dormitory, they met Zhang Zhichao on the second floor of the stairs standing at the door of the dormitory. “Wang Xubo asked Zhang Zhichao,'Are you listening (screaming)?', Zhang Zhichao said,'Listen.'
Li Xun believes that the person who appeared at the door of the washroom was not Zhang Zhichao-if Wang Xubo was indeed at the door of the washroom withZhang Zhichao said something, then, when Wang Xubo was on the second floor, why would he ask "Did you listen" again? This is unreasonable.
A reporter from China Youth Daily went to Wang Xubo's home twice to verify. His father said he could not contact Wang Xubo and declined to interview. The father of Yang Tongzhen also declined interviews by many media.
Lawyer claimed that the conviction had only a confession without valid physical evidence
According to the verdict, Wang Xubo and Yang Tongzhen met two people at the door of the washroom. One was Zhang Zhichao and the other was a friend of Zhang Zhichao. , Wang Guangchao in the same grade.
According to the verdict, after Zhang Zhichao committed the crime, he met Wang Guangchao when he left the washroom, told the crime facts, and asked him to help guard the washroom. Later, Zhang Zhichao went to the school's canteen to buy a new lock to lock the abandoned toilet.
This abandoned toilet hides Feng Ting's body. The verdict found that Zhang Zhichao met Feng Ting in the washroom. Seeing that there was no one around him, he became adulterous, so he stepped forward to put the pencil sharpener he carried on Feng Ting's neck and hijacked him into the washroom. Finally, he was raped by covering his mouth and choking his neck, causing him to suffocate to death.
Zhang Zhichao also admitted the above-mentioned crime in his confession to the police.
However, Li Xun believes that the characterization of the corpse shows that the death of the corpse was mechanically killed by a hand pinch and there was a process of resistance. Then the victim's corpse and in the finger joints will definitely leave the criminal dander and other body materials, at least there will be clothing fibers, but The investigators have never extracted this.
A reporter from China Youth Daily noticed that the autopsy report showed that there was a vertical 2.5×0.6 cm wound in the middle of the forehead of the corpse, the edges of the wound were irregular, and there were three colorless and transparent glass fragments in the wound cavity.
Li Xun stated that Zhang Zhichao’s confession did not use glass or pushed Feng Ting to the glass. In other words, his confession could not completely correspond to the autopsy result.
This is not the only plot identified by the judgment. The verdict stated that on the afternoon of January 11, 2005, Zhang Zhichao took advantage of other classmates' class opportunity and carried a pencil sharpener to sneak into the abandoned toilet to rape the corpse and cut the corpse in multiple places.
However, the autopsy report showed that no human semen was extracted from the vagina or oral cavity.
According to Zhang Zhichao's confession to the police, he took a small wooden stick and inserted it into the victim's anus. When identifying the scene, Zhang Zhichao also found this small wooden stick. This is the only physical evidence contained in the judgment.
"If this is true, the wood stick will obviously leave behind the victim's body material, but the investigators have neither extracted the material and compared it with the victim's DNA to determine whether this is a tool for the crime, nor did they extract fingerprints and compare it with Zhang Zhichao. Is he the perpetrator?" Li Xun said.
The corpse was covered with a woven bag above the buttocks. This detail also caused the lawyer to question.
Zhang Zhichao confessed that during Wang Guangchao's guard on the morning of January 10, he went downstairs to the canteen and bought a new lock. The woven bag was brought from the dormitory to the toilet the next afternoon before the corpse was raped. Wang Guangchao's confession was inconsistent. He claimed that he was Zhang Zhichao guarding the door, and Zhang Zhichao came back with a woven bag after he went down for less than a minute.
The owner of the woven bag is Zhang Zhichao’s roommate surnamed Li. Zhang Zhichao once said that the woven bag was bought from the roommate at a meal ticket of 5 cents a night; later, the name was changed to that the woven bag came from the house. Stole it from a friend.
However, when the student surnamed Li was questioned by the police, he denied that he had such a woven bag. His mother also said she did not know about it.
In the statement on returning the supplementary investigation issued by the Public Security Bureau, the police stated that the investigators have repeatedly found the home of a classmate surnamed Li and searched in his home. They also investigated one by one another 80 students in the same dormitory, and went to Linyi Customs and other departments and more than 70 willow business units visited and investigated. It took more than a month to find out the source of the woven bags.
As for the penknife and other criminal tools, Zhang Zhichao said in his statement that they had been discarded, and the police also said that they could not find them.
Zhang Zhichao told the lawyer during the meeting that things such as pencil sharpeners did not exist, they were all made up by him, and he did not do the things.
The class teacher admitted that he was not present during the interrogation of underage students
On March 6, 2006, the Linyi Intermediate People’s Court ruled that Zhang Zhichao was guilty of rape and sentenced to life imprisonment and deprived of political rights for life. Zhang Zhichao did not appeal.
Zhang Zhichao’s mother said that now, Zhang Zhichao, who is serving his sentence in prison, has received a reduced sentence and can be released in about eight years.
It is not just Zhang Zhichao who was sentenced. The court also found that Zhang Zhichao's friend Wang Guangchao, who knew Zhang Zhichao was a criminal, deliberately gave false testimony to shield him. The court sentenced Wang Guangchao to 3 years imprisonment, suspended for 3 years. The
verdict stated that neither Zhang Zhichao nor Wang Guangchao made any defenses in the trial. The defender proposed that Zhang Zhichao was under 16 years of age at the time of the crime and had a good attitude of pleading guilty and showed repentance. Wang Guangchao's defender also made a similar statement.
Now, Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao both stated that they admitted to committing a crime because they were tortured to extract a confession, but they did not do it.
The reporter noted that the "Criminal Procedure Law" that was applicable that year stipulated that "For cases where minors under the age of 18 commit crimes, the legal representative of the criminal suspect or defendant may be notified during interrogation and trial. Be there.”
In the transcripts of Zhang Zhichao and Wang Guangchao, the head teacher’s signature as the “person present” appeared many times. However, Zhang Zhichao's head teacher surnamed Xu and grade head teacher surnamed Su, who signed in multiple transcripts, told the China Youth Daily reporter that they were not present and the signatures were notified to the Public Security Bureau afterwards.
"The transcript should have been prepared, and when they came to ask, I looked at the transcript." Wang Guangchao's head teacher, surnamed Li, said in an interview with a reporter from China Youth Daily. He was impressed and signed once.
Zhang Zhichao's mother said that Zhang Zhichao was imprisoned in 2006, but it was not until 2011 that he told her that he did not do those things. So she started looking for the verdict of the year and began to appeal.
Wang Guangchao told the China Youth Daily reporter that he did not see Zhang Zhichao that morning, let alone hear Zhang Zhichao talk about the crime. He once thought that Zhang Zhichao was looking for a backstop when he committed the crime. It was not until Zhang Zhichao's mother found him that he felt that the case might be strange.
In 2012, the Shandong Provincial Higher People's Court rejected Zhang Zhichao's mother's complaint. The notice stated that there is no evidence to prove that the guilty confession made by Zhang Zhichao in the public security agency was obtained by torture, and that Zhang Zhichao's multiple guilty confessions after his return to the case were signed and fingerprinted by the teacher, which can fully protect Zhang Zhichao's litigation rights. The
notice also shows that Zhang Zhichao’s guilty confession stated that the circumstances cannot be known unless he committed the crime. His guilty confession and other evidence in the case can be mutually confirmed and should be used as the basis for the verdict.
Zhang Zhichao does not agree with this. When he was interviewed by the lawyer, he insisted that these crimes were told under the prompt of the police, not to mention that he would be beaten.
In 2014, the Linyi City People’s Procuratorate issued a notice of review of criminal complaints, stating that the original conviction was clear and the evidence was indeed sufficient, etc., and that it did not meet the requirements for a protest, so it was not prosecuted.
China Youth Daily reporter asked the staff of Linyi City People’s Procuratorate’s Complaints and Appeals Section to find out about the situation. He said that there were some flaws in some details of the case, but it did not affect the conviction and sentencing of this case.
This newspaper Linshu, Shandong May 26, 2015,
