First time local authorities have done so in wrongful sentencing case
A court in Anhui Province took out an advertisement in a local newspaper to apologize to 19 people wrongfully sentenced in an illegal fund-raising case, the first such apology in China which provided an example of how authorities should deal with such cases, according to observers.
The 19 people were awarded a settlement, and the announcement was also meant to restore their reputation, read the apology of the Anhui Provincial High People's Court in the Bozhou Evening News on Monday.
Most of the 19 people were accountants in the Bozhou Xingbang company sentenced for illegal fund-raising in 2012, but were spared from criminal liability after a retrial in 2014.
"This is the first time a Chinese court has openly apologized in a local newspaper to victims of misjudged cases," Yu Chao, the lawyer of 17 of the 19 victims, told the Global Times, adding that the 19 people received the total compensation of about 4.3 million yuan ($0.7 million).
Yu said that the apology was made upon his clients' request.
The majority of the 19 victims are women who had spent three or four years in detention houses before the retrial, and some of them were forced to separate from their months-old children, while others suffered a divorce due to the wrongful sentence, according to Yu.
"The illegal fund-raising case, which involved over 3 billion yuan, had been widely reported on by media since 2010, and the media coverage had a deep negative impact on them," Yu said.
In previous similar cases, courts usually issued an apology letter or sent a monetary settlement to the victims' homes, Yu said.
According to the State Compensation Law, related authorities should apologize, pay mental injury compensation and restore the good name of victims of misjudged cases.
Mo Shaoping, a criminal defense lawyer and law professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times that the court could become more credible after making that apology.
Courts which decide to issue public apologies should ask the victims' permission, as some may not want to be named in public, said Qu Xinjiu, dean of the Criminal Justice School at the China University of Political Science and Law.
China corrected 12 misjudged cases in 2014, including the widely covered Huugjilt case in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
