Qian Renfeng hugs her father at her home in Nantuan village, Qiaojia county, Yunnan, on Dec 22, the day after her conviction was overturned by a local court. (Photo provide to China Daily)
"Ten or more years ago, the police regularly used torture when interrogating suspects because they were more reliant on oral confessions and their ability to collect evidence at the crime scene was inadequate," he said.
Now, though, interrogations are subject to strict regulations and torture has seldom been seen, especially in China's larger cities, since the government ruled that all interrogations must be recorded with audio and video, he said.
Yuan, the legal researcher, praised the government's determination to eradicate torture and said every step forward underlines the country's growing awareness of the importance of protecting human rights.
In 2012, the nation's top legislators highlighted the ban on torture in an amendment to the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law. A year later, the Supreme People's Court published a guideline under which courts were instructed to rule evidence inadmissible if it had been gained via improper methods, such as exposure to extreme cold, refusal to provide food or sleep-deprivation techniques.
In addition to the legal measures, improved investigative skills, such as the use of electronic devices to monitor and collect DNA evidence, have also contributed to improved evidence collection and helped to reduce the number of wrongful convictions, according to Renmin University's He.
A survey he conducted in 2007 showed that more than 90 percent of the 130 cases of wrongful conviction he studied were based on confessions obtained under duress. "However, our recent studies show that the problem has been alleviated greatly," he said.
Prosecutors should also be applauded, he said, because the improvement in interview techniques is partly the result of their improved supervision of evidence provided by the police. Meanwhile, the increasing role of judges, who handle cases independently, has also been crucial, he added.
"Ensuring that every judicial procedure is legal is an effective way of reducing the number of wrongful convictions, and will improve the nation's judicial credibility," he added.
'A hot, urgent issue'
He, who has spent more than 10 years studying cases of wrongful conviction, said that while physical torture, such as beating, has been brought under control, the police still use psychological coercion, such as sleep deprivation and threats, to obtain confessions.
"Judicial experts are studying ways to prevent and outlaw this type of mental torture; this is a hot, urgent issue in enforcing the rule of law," he said, adding that the legal definition of torture should be updated as soon as possible.
Yuan, the legal researcher, said the courts need to ensure that the records of interrogations provided by the police are accurate: "In some counties, the police only made a record after the suspects had confessed, or they only recorded certain parts of the confession."
Although he welcomed the moves to improve interrogation skills among officers, he warned that the police should avoid the practice prevalent in the United States, where suspects are often asked leading questions designed to prompt predetermined answers.
"Leading questions may result in false confessions that have the potential to bring about miscarriages of justice," said Yuan, who worked from 2012 to 2013 with The Innocence Project, a non-governmental organization in the United States founded to overturn miscarriages of justice and exonerate those who have been wrongfully convicted, especially via DNA evidence.
He urged similar organizations in China to make concerted joint efforts to eradicate torture and correct judicial mistakes.
Luo Yaping, a professor at the People's Public Security University of China who specializes in the study of investigative skills, said the police's ability to collect evidence at crime scenes has improved greatly, and most officers understand that the collection of legally admissible evidence is the key to reducing the number of miscarriages of justice.
"However, the lack of officers in grassroots police stations makes it hard for them to investigate cases, because the extra workload leaves little time for them to review their procedures and actions," she said.
"Investigation is the first step in dealing with a criminal case. If that first step is inadequate, the procedures that foll-ow will also be affected to a greater or lesser degree."
