Courts correcting their wrongs to let people feel justice in every case

IN THE ANNUAL WORK REPORT OF the Supreme People's Court to the National People's Congress on Sunday, Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said national courts corrected 1,357 wrongful convictions in criminal cases last year. For three successive years he has mentioned "correcting wrongful convictions", which Beijing Youth Daily called positive progress on Monday:

We mortals commit wrongs. The right attitude when finding we have done something wrong is to admit it and correct it. The Supreme People's Court has done this in its annual work report by listing the wrongs of the courts, which shows not only their confidence in correcting the mistakes, but also their determination to defend justice.

A thorough reading of the SPC's past reports shows the efforts it has made to prevent these wrongs from happening again. For example, in their 2014 report, they said they would strengthen the double-checking of evidence and allow lawyers to play a bigger role in criminal defense cases. In the 2015 report, they promised to better uphold the principle of assumption of innocence.