China bans evidence obtained by torture

BEIJING | China has issued new rules saying evidence obtained through torture and threats cannot be used in criminal prosecutions and has said such evidence would be thrown out in death-penalty cases that are under appeal.

The new regulations — posted on the central government’s website Sunday — make it clear that evidence with unclear origins, confessions obtained through torture and testimony acquired through violence and threats are invalid. This is the first time Beijing has explicitly stated that evidence obtained under torture or duress is illegal and inadmissible in court.

“Since the system was not perfect, the standards on reinforcing the law were not unified, and the law executors were not equally competent. Problems occurred in the handling of cases, and they should not be ignored,” according to a statement on the website.

The regulations were released jointly by the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice, according to a statement on the website.

The U.S. State Department’s latest annual report on human rights around the world says China last year continued serious human rights abuses that included torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, extrajudicial killings, executions without due process, and the use of forced labor, including prison labor.

Legal experts in China say the new rules constitute major progress in protecting the legal rights of defendants.

One of the regulations pertains to how death-penalty cases should be reviewed, including a rule that illegally obtained evidence should be invalid.

A second rule sets out guidelines on how evidence should be obtained in criminal cases, which explicitly bans the use of force or intimidation on defendants and witnesses.

“The issue of illegally obtained evidence has long been a controversial one in China, and now they made a big step forward in this respect,” said Fan Yu, a law professor at Renmin University Law School who specializes in the judicial system.

The rulings are especially important for death-penalty cases, in which a flawed system has led to the deaths of several criminal suspects by torture in detention centers.

“Death sentences are irreversible. Any tiny mistake could cost people’s lives,” she said. “There’s serious lesson to be drawn from those cases.”

China executes more people annually than any country in the world, though it does not release an official count. The rights group Amnesty International estimated China put at least 1,718 people to death in 2008.

In 2008, China’s top court said about 15 percent of death-sentence verdicts by lower courts were found to have problems, the China Daily newspaper reported Monday.

The frequent use of torture by police to obtain confessions was highlighted earlier this month in the case of Zhao Zuohai, a man who spent 11 years in jail after being beaten into confessing the murder of a man who wasn’t even dead.

After the man he supposedly killed returned to their hometown in central Henan province, Zhao, 57, was freed and given $96,000 in government compensation. After his release, Mr. Zhao said he was forced to confess because police beat him during interrogations and deprived him of sleep for days.

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