Jilin court overturns earlier verdict that Jin Zhehong, now 50, had killed a 20-year-old woman, ruling the ‘evidence was insufficient and the facts not clear’
The defendant in one of China’s longest-running murder cases has had his name cleared after 23 years in jail, four retrials and four death sentences.
Jin Zhehong, 50, was finally exonerated on Friday by the Jilin High People’s Court over the 1995 murder of a 20-year-old woman whose body was found in the wilderness.
It overturned an earlier court verdict that Jin had let the woman hitchhike on his motorbike, killed her and left her body in a ditch.
On Friday, the court ruled that “the evidence was insufficient and the facts were not clear”, which invalidated the murder charge.
According to the verdict provided by Jin’s lawyer, Li Jinxing, to the South China Morning Post, the court found that the previous evidence was contradictory and key facts such as the exact time and place of death, and the murder weapon, could not be established.
The court concluded that there was no solid evidence linking Jin to the murder, since none of his DNA was found near the body, and that the original charge rested solely on Jin’s confessions which were unreliable.
