Wrongly Convicted 'Murderer' Free At Last

May 25, 2005 — -- Spring was bittersweet this year for She Xianglin. The prison guards released him in early April after 11 years in prison. After She's "murder victim" -- his wife -- resurfaced in his village, authorities realized he had been convicted for a crime he never committed.

She's wife had disappeared in the mid-'90s. When a woman's body was found in the town's reservoir, authorities accused the young man of killing his bride. Despite repeated petitions to the court, She's claims of innocence went unheard until his "victim" sauntered into their hometown to see the family.

A free man again, She, 39, has decided to move on, but many Chinese want change, saying his story highlights China's overzealous police, the courts' lack of power and the country's arbitrary criminal legal system.

"The individual cases of injustice put a human face on the systemic and structural lack of protection for people's rights," said Sharon Hom, executive director of Human Rights in China.

The People's Republic of China has come a long way when it comes to civil rights. After a decade of lawlessness during the 1970s Cultural Revolution, China initiated legal reforms in the early 1980s. Fifteen years later, the Communist party, under international pressure, amended the criminal law to codify existing regulations and address the lack of due process. The number of lawyers has mushroomed to more than 100,000 from just 200 in 1992, according to an article in People's Daily.

But more lawyers and new laws have not wiped out vast corruption in the legal system and the ironclad political hold by the Communist Party over the courts throughout the country.

At the age of 28, She Xianglin had it made. He worked a regular schedule as a security guard, unlike a lot of his friends who toiled in the fields. He lived with his wife and daughter, and his mother and brother lived close by. They weren't rich like city folk in Shanghai, but Hubei province, in the heart of China along the Yangtze river, suited She just fine.