High court rejects appeal of man who wants credit for killing another woman

The Hebei High People's Court rejected Wang Shujin's appeal on Tuesday, upholding his convictions of rape and intentional homicide as well as his death sentence, a report from the Beijing News said.

Wang, a high-profile criminal from Hebei province who has been sitting on death row for about a decade for serial rape and murder, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for rape and received the death penalty for intentional homicide on Nov 24 after the provincial Handan Intermediate People's Court identified the four rapes, three killings and an attempted killing he committed from 1993 to 1995.

The death penalty will be submitted to the Supreme People's Court, China's top court, for review, and can be carried out if it is approved by the top court, according to the Criminal Procedure Law.

It was the second time that the Handan court sentenced Wang to death and the high court upheld the ruling. It was also the second time his death penalty was sent for review by the top court.

Wang, 53, drew public attention in 2005 when he was detained and voluntarily confessed to several rapes and murders. In 2007, the Handan court sentenced him to death after finding him guilty of three rapes, two killings and an attempted murder.

The death penalty was upheld by the provincial high court in 2013 and then submitted to the country's top court for a review.

On Nov 9, however, the top court overturned Wang's death sentence and sent the case back to the Handan court for retrial because of newly discovered evidence.

In the rehearing, the Handan court said the new evidence was the result of a DNA test on a skeleton found by police following directions Wang gave them. It was related to a rape and murder case in 1993 involving a woman surnamed Zhang, to which Wang also confessed to after the detention.

The confession was not supported by prosecutors in the 2007 trial, but this time, the Handan court found Wang guilty of killing Zhang, as the DNA test proved the skeleton was hers.

But Wang remained unhappy with the decision because it did not include another killing he claims to be responsible for.

In 2005, he had also confessed to raping and killing a woman surnamed Kang in a cornfield in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei, in 1994. Although the confession was rejected by the Handan court, it quickly triggered public attention because another man, Nie Shubin, had already been sentenced to death and executed in 1995 for those crimes.

Wang's confession to Kang's rape and murder prompted a reinvestigation of the case. In December 2016, the top court publicly announced Nie was not guilty as evidence in the case was not strong enough to prove his conviction.

In November's retrial, Wang still insisted he had raped and killed Kang, but the prosecutors still rejected the confession, adding his testimony did not match the physical evidence in the case.

"My client has always insisted that he was responsible in Kang's case, thinking judges should make it clear, so he appealed to the high court," Zhu Aimin, Wang's lawyer, told media after Wang was sentenced to death on Nov 24.