Will Nie's case prevent wrong court verdicts?

The Supreme People's Court declared Nie Shubin innocent on Dec 2, 21 years after the resident of Shijiazhuang in North China's Hebei province was executed for "rape and murder" at the age of 21. The correction of the verdict against Nie, a milestone in the legal history of China, shows the promotion of the rule of law has made great progress.

Twenty-one years have passed since Nie was found "guilty of rape and murder" and executed in April 1995. And it has been 11 years since Wang Shujin, a suspect, claimed in 2005 that he had committed the crimes. The sentence given to Nie had attracted a lot of social attention at the time, yet the judiciary in Hebei where the case was heard made little progress.

So instead of asking the Hebei court to review the case, the Supreme People's Court assigned the job to the High People's Court of Shandong province, which eventually absolved Nie of the crimes.