On December 29, the Sichuan Provincial High Court acquitted Li Jin. The picture shows Li Jin holding the verdict. Photo provided by the interviewee
After years of complaints, Li Jin, who just turned 56, received a not guilty verdict.
On December 29, the Sichuan Provincial High Court issued a verdict in the retrial case of Li Jin for robbery, and changed the verdict to the original defendant Li Jin not guilty.
Compared with when the retrial opened on April 25 this year, Li Jin’s frown relaxed a little. After learning that he had been acquitted, Li Jin said he "cannot describe in words" how he felt. He told The Paper that he planned to return to his hometown in Yuanmou first, rest for a while, and then deal with the matter of applying for state compensation with a lawyer.
Li Jin was detained for investigation on September 30, 1995 for robbery, arrested on January 25, 1996, and released on July 7, 2017. His time in custody was actually 21 years, nine months and 10 days. . Li Jin remembers that on the day he was released from prison, he was taken back to his hometown in Yuanmou, Yunnan by a police car. He saw that his old house had been turned into ruins due to being unoccupied and unmaintained for many years. Li Jin said that his parents never visited him while serving his sentence, and he had cut off contact with them. He also has a younger brother and a younger sister with whom he has no contact. After
was released from prison, Li Jin worked odd jobs while appealing his case. On June 11, 2020, the Sichuan Provincial High Court issued a "Retrial Decision" and decided to initiate a retrial process for Li Jin's robbery and homicide case. After that, "I did not expect to have to wait for more than three years."
Li Jin still insists that he was in Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province at the time of the incident and not in Yuanmou County, where the incident occurred. However, the Sichuan High Court held a retrial and held that after investigation, witness Fang Enguang could not prove that Li Jin was in Yingjiang County on the day of the crime.
Regarding the case itself, Li Jin has a lot of emotions: "Two people were killed. At that time, I and the brothers Pu Facheng were arrested, sentenced and imprisoned as the murderers. Now the three of us have been acquitted. . In other words, the real culprit in the case is not us." Li Jin said that although his case has come to an end, "I, like them (the family of the deceased), hope to find the real culprit."
The Paper News previously reported , on October 13, 1994, the victims Yao and Bai checked into the guest house of the Yuanmou Public Works Section of the Kunming Railway Branch. At 5:50 a.m. on October 14, Yao and Bai were found murdered by guest house staff, who immediately reported the case. After identification, Yao Moumou was killed by being hit on the head multiple times with a single-edged sharp instrument and a blunt instrument, and Bai Moumou was stabbed to the heart and large blood vessels with a sharp instrument by someone else, resulting in blood loss.
At first, Li Jin and fellow brothers Pu Facheng and Pu Faneng were accused of conspiring to commit the crime. In February 1997, the Chengdu Railway Transport Intermediate Court sentenced Li Jin and Pu Facheng to death in the first instance, and Pufa Neng was sentenced to suspended death. After the three people appealed, the Sichuan High Court sent the case back for retrial. The Chengtie Intermediate People's Court retried and sentenced Li Jin to life imprisonment, but the Platts brothers were not guilty. Li Jin appealed again, and at the same time, the prosecutor's office filed a protest. After a trial, the Sichuan Provincial High Court found that Li Jin collaborated with others to commit robbery and murder, and upheld the life sentence. The Sichuan Provincial High Court determined that there were multiple perpetrators in the case, but the "others" who committed the crime with Li Jin were not the Platts brothers.
The acquittal verdict issued by the Sichuan High Court this time held that the on-site investigation confirmed that there were more than two perpetrators, and key facts such as the specific perpetrators and means of committing the crime were unclear. Taking the whole case into consideration, there are certain contradictions between Li Jin's guilty confession and the objective evidence on record. The authenticity of Li Jin's guilty confession is doubtful, and there is no objective evidence at the scene pointing to Li Jin's crime. The evidence that Li Jin committed the crime with others has not formed complete evidence. The system does not meet the legal standard of proof that the evidence is reliable and sufficient.
