Innocent man gets record award

A man from Guangdong Province who spent 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit has received one of the highest compensation awards for wrongful conviction, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported Thursday.

Huang Liyi from the city of Kaiping received 820,000 yuan ($131,420) on Monday from the Guangdong Higher People's Court, which awarded him 665,889 yuan for loss of freedom and the remainder for psychological damages.

Huang had been convicted by the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court of fraud and was sentenced to life in prison in November 2000. Currently, such a sentence for fraud would have to involve more than 1 million yuan.

The court found that Huang delivered five checks that were written by his customers to three different suppliers while he was working for his uncle's construction material company. The checks from his customers bounced and the three suppliers sued Huang.

One of Huang's customers who wrote the checks committed suicide and the other fled the city.

Huang's appeals to the provincial higher court were repeatedly rejected until 2009, when the court ordered a new trial. He was declared not guilty due to "insufficient evidence" and was released in July 2010.

The Guangdong Higher People's Court and the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court declined to comment Thursday.

"The compensation from the State is one of the highest in the country," said Dai Yannan, a civil rights lawyer from the Henan Boshi Law Firm.

In a previous case, Zhao Zuohai, 59, a farmer from Henan Province, was falsely accused of murdering another villager and spent 11 years in prison. Zhao was released in 2010 and received 650,000 yuan in compensation.

"You are basically dragging the government into the court when you try to overturn a wrongful conviction," Dai said, "You need a lot of solid evidence to tell the government that they are wrong. Even a child feels humiliated when forced to admit making a mistake."

Huang received 162.65 yuan for each of the 4,094 days he spent in jail, a standard set by the Supreme People's Court.

"The compensation rate is usually determined by the average daily pay of local workers over the previous year," said Liu Wei, a lawyer from the Beijing Chenghui Law Firm.