Man compensated for five-year wrongful custody

File photo of Ouyang Jia.

A man who was acquitted after spending five years in prison in central China's Hunan Province will receive compensation from the state.

The Intermediate People's Court of Loudi City on Tuesday ruled that Ouyang Jia, 24, should be paid at least 460,000 yuan (73,641 US dollars) for his wrongful 1,827-day incarceration.

Local police detained Ouyang in July 2009, believing that he was part of a gang that had robbed two women at knife point, and had stolen 6,500 yuan, a cellphone and a gold necklace.

In December 2009, he was sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison by a Louxing District court. He lodged an appeal and the district court reduced his prison term to eight years after a retrial.

Ouyang lodged another appeal and the city court quashed his conviction in July 2014 on the basis that the "evidence was inadequate".

In another landmark case, the parents of a teenager in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, who was wrongly convicted and subsequently executed for rape and murder in 1996, were awarded 2 million yuan compensation from the state.

On Dec. 15, the region's higher people's court ruled that the teenager, Huugjilt, was not guilty.

At a national meeting earlier this month, top judge Zhou Qiang vowed to continue with the correction of wrongful convictions following multiple judicial scandals.

"Lessons should be learned from major wrongful convictions such as Huugjilt, and the harm they have caused should be recognized," said Zhou, who is president of the Supreme People's Court.