Chinese courts have corrected judgements in 37 high-profile cases involving 61 people in the past five years, said Chief Justice Zhou Qiang when reporting on judicial reform to the top legislature Wednesday.
The Supreme People's Court (SPC) has issued a guideline asking judges to acquit defendants upon insufficient evidence instead of delivering a compromise sentence, Zhou told the ongoing bi-monthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
The SPC has stressed the need to exclude illegal evidence and improve examination of evidence during trials. From 2013 to this September, more than 4,000 defendants were acquitted, he said.
Prosecutors have also stepped up supervision of police and courts, said Cao Jianming, procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, at the same session.
Since 2013, prosecuting agencies decided not to arrest 2,624 suspects and not to prosecute another 870, he said.
Prosecuting agencies paid special attention to the convicts who persisted in their appeals and investigated their cases, Cao said.
One of the high-profile cases dealt with was the rape-murder of a 17-year-old girl in east China's Zhejiang Province by two men, Zhang Hui and his uncle, Zhang Gaoping. The judgement was overturned in March 2013 for insufficient evidence after they had spent nine years in prison.
