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We are glad to see that the heated debate surrounding the release of a convicted murderer have not subsided since he walked free.
She Xianglin, a 39-year-old Hubei farmer, received a "not guilty" verdict last week after 11 years in prison for a murder that never happened. He was convicted of killing his wife but she recently turned up in their hometown.
Like all citizens concerned about miscarriages of justice, we are waiting anxiously to see how far the judiciary will go now.
For the anguish they have imposed on She and his family, the authorities have a legal obligation to fully redress the case.
There are no grounds, legal or moral, to deny She compensation from the State. But, as She's daughter said, all the money on earth cannot buy back his 11 lost years.
If the remedy is limited to correcting a single mistake, which is very likely, the judiciary will miss a good opportunity to upgrade itself.
She's imprisonment, the result of several mistakes by different law enforcement authorities, offers food for thought.
We believe that few courts and judges will consciously repeat the Hubei judiciary's outright disregard of legal procedures now the public is watching them more closely.
Anyone who bothers to consult the nation's Criminal Procedure Law can see obvious violations of procedure in She's case.
Behind the procedural mistakes, we can see a persistent inclination to criminalize throughout the proceedings.
That inclination was so strong that the lack of evidence did not get looked at properly.
It is not yet known if there was any specific hostility against She in the previous legal process.
But the way the legal process works is a worry to anyone suspected of a criminal offence.
In the past few decades, the official definition of the law enforcement's role was to crack down on crime and maintain social order. It was out of the question for a court to assume a criminal suspect was innocent until proven guilty.
Instead, the courts were preoccupied with pronouncing guilty verdicts and handing out punishments.
Recent amendments to the Criminal Procedure Law as well as the present code of conduct for law executors have shown a heavy emphasis on protecting civil rights.
Theoretically, a criminal suspect is not considered guilty until guilt is proved.
But She Xianglin was a very typical victim of the country's old judicial philosophy.
His tragedy should be a thing of the past given today's unprecedented emphasis on human rights.
But we should not blind ourselves to the facts. The inclination to say people are criminals without first proving them to be so is too deep-rooted to be eliminated overnight.
There are worries that the idea of assuming innocence until a person is proven guilty may hurt judicial efficiency or even exonerate real criminals.
These possibilities do exist but such disadvantages are outweighed by the advantages.
The paramount reason the judiciary exists is to see that justice is done.
It is not about rushing people through the courts and locking them up to "show" so-called criminals are off the streets.
She's tragedy is a sad example of how much injustice an innocent citizen may suffer.
At least he was not put to death; that had happened to other convicts who were later found to be innocent.
The debate over She's case shows people do want judicial reforms. Their voices should not fall on deaf ears.
(China Daily April 18, 2005)
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