Courts act to improve protection of rights

China's judicial authorities will continue efforts to correct wrongful verdicts this year and take comprehensive measures to protect citizens' personal and property rights, two senior judicial officials said on Sunday.

Last year, 1,076 criminal defendants were declared innocent, 37 more than in 2015, and 1,376 wrongful verdicts or sentences were changed on appeal, the Supreme People's Court President Zhou Qiang said during a work report to about 3,000 national legislators.

He mentioned a case on Dec 2 in which the top court posthumously pardoned Nie Shubin, a native of Hebei province executed in 1995. Nie was found to have been wrongly convicted of rape and murder on the basis of unclear and insufficient evidence.