Behave prosecutors to protect innocent
China Daily  Updated: 2005-05-28 07:28

Reports from a national conference on public prosecution practices have it that the Supreme People's Procuratorate has worked out a new set of rules to prevent public prosecutors from abusing their powers.

A public prosecutor meeting any party of a lawsuit without authorization would be suspended from his or her duties for investigation, according to the rules.

The same would happen to a public prosecutor in five other circumstances, including the use of torture in evidence collection.

At the same meeting, Deputy Prosecutor General Qiu Xueqiang called on his colleagues nationwide to faithfully implement the presumption of innocence in their work.

Such rules should have been a natural part of our prosecutors' code of conduct. The presumption of innocence has been in our Criminal Procedure Law for nine years.

Still, judging from recent media reports alone, dereliction of duty, and even corruption in our procuratorates, are too damaging to be ignored.

In the notorious case of She Xianglin, a Hubei Province farmer was convicted of murdering his wife based on shaky and conflicting evidence and testimony.

He was declared innocent after 11 years in prison, when his ex-wife reappeared on a recent trip to her ancestral home.

More recently, on Thursday, two police officers in Tangshan, Hebei Province, were sentenced to two years in prison for extorting confessions by torture.

The victim, who had been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on charges of intentional homicide and illicit possession of weapons in 2003, was found innocent and released last November.

That was after the true culprit was arrested in Zhejiang Province in another case and pleaded guilty.

This reminds us of a strikingly similar case in Liaoning Province.

In 1986, Li Huawei's wife was killed at home. Without any leads, the police arrested Li as the chief suspect and later, Li was charged with the crime he did not commit. The local court cleared Li of the crime in 2002, after he had served 14 years in prison.

Each case may have its peculiar complexities. The causes of injustice vary from case to case.

But many unjust verdicts feature the procurators' failure to play their role as prescribed in law.

In all three cases mentioned above, unsubstantiated evidence or testimony has been vetted by local procuratorates.

The results should have been different otherwise.

The presumption of innocence is essential because temptation from the opposite, the presumption of guilt, is always strong in law enforcement.

But if our public prosecutors are preoccupied with the presumption of guilt, we cannot afford to imagine how many citizens will be unjustly, falsely, or wrongly charged or sentenced for crimes they did not commit.

Except for the right to a defence and the presumption of innocence, there are few safeguards for suspects in criminal litigation.

Public procurators have an obligation to make sure the accused are not deprived of such guarantees.

It is beyond procurators' authority to tell if a suspect is guilty, or not. But it is their duty to decide whether or not the evidence presented substantiates a public prosecution.

Their role is substantial because, more likely than not, unjust rulings are based on problematic evidence.

Disappointingly, our procurators can claim innocence in none of the three cases above.

The tragedies are illustrative of the threat to civil liberties from dysfunctional procuratorates.

(China Daily 05/28/2005 page4)

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