2 acquitted after 10 years in jail

A provincial court in east China on Tuesday acquitted two men of the rape charges for which they have already spent 10 years behind bars.

The Zhejiang Provincial Higher People's Court on Tuesday reversed its 2004 ruling that included a death sentence with two-year reprieve for Zhang Hui and a 15-year prison term for his uncle, Zhang Gaoping, for raping a woman in Hangzhou.

The court said in a notice that "the acquittal was rendered, as there was new evidence showing the possibility of another suspect. Evidence presented during the previous trial was not enough to support the conviction."

Sources close to the court said investigators found another suspect whose DNA matched that collected from the woman's body. The suspect is currently serving a prison term for another case.

The verdict from the first trial held that Zhang Hui and Zhang Gaoping carried the woman on their truck early on the morning of May 19, 2003. Police found the woman's body in a roadside ditch at about 10 a.m. the same day.

The Zhangs were not immediately available for interviews.

According to the court source, they had been serving their prison terms in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The court said it received an appeal to review the case from Zhang Hui's father in February 2012. A closed door retrial was held last week.

In January, the court pledged to correct any mistakes in the event that an erroneous judgement is discovered.

Also in January, the court started a retrial for a 1995 robbery case, in which four men were either handed death sentences with reprieve or life imprisonment.

If the four are proven innocent in the ongoing retrial, they would have been wrongly jailed for 18 years.