Back from the Dead: Wrongful Convictions and Criminal Justice in China by Jiahong He (review)

Jiahong He’s Back from the Dead: Wrongful Convictions and Criminal Justice in China addresses an important topic that should be of great interest to readers concerned with justice and human rights protection around the world. His observations on three cases of wrongful conviction are considerably informative and insightful.

Part 1 introduces the case of Teng Xingshan—a murder case in Heilongjiang in 1987 in which Teng was sentenced to death and executed in 1989 and declared innocent in 2005—and analyzes five root causes for wrongful convictions in five chapters, respectively: (1) setting inappropriately tight deadlines for solving criminal cases, (2) “from confession to evidence” model of criminal investigation, (3) misinterpretation of scientific evidence, (4) continued use of torture to extract confessions, and (5) one-sided and prejudicial collection of evidence.

Similarly, part 2 starts with a murder case in Hubei in 1994 in which She Xianglin was sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment in 1998 and exonerated in 2005. By telling the story of the She Xianglin case, part 2 observes five further root causes for wrongful convictions: (1) bowing to public opinion in contradiction of legal principles; (2) unlawfully extended custody with tunnel vision; (3) merely nominal checks among the police, the procuratorate, and the court; (4) nominalization of courtroom trials; and (5) reduction of punishment in case of doubt.

In part 3, the developments and improvements of the criminal justice system in China are introduced based on the case of Zhao Zuohai, a murder case in Henan in 1999 in which Zhao was sentenced to death with a two-year suspension in 2003 and exoneration in 2010. Again, this part includes five chapters: (1) exclusionary rules against illegally obtained evidence, (2) a move from investigation centeredness to trial centeredness, (3) reform of the people’s juror system, (4) reform of the criminal retrial system, and (5) changing the criminal justice mind-set.

All three cases are murder cases in which “victims” turned out to be still alive years later. The author picked a very vivid title—Back from the Dead—to summarize the similarity of the three cases. For the average reader, Back from the Dead will be a book that is fun to read. The author is very good at telling stories and masterful with his words. He is able to ensure that readers will patiently continue reading, even though what they are reading concerns legal theories, which are supposed to be “boring.” This can be explained by the fact that he is not only a professor of law but also a successful novelist whose works have been translated into several languages. As he says in the preface, “my dream is to write an academic legal thriller . . . this book is different” (p. xxiii).

For legal scholars, Back from the Dead will be an important source concerning wrongful convictions and the Chinese criminal justice system. There are numerous works examining wrongful convictions worldwide; however, a focus on regional study of wrongful convictions in China is seldom found. Aside from wrongful convictions in China, the book provides an engaging overview of Chinese court structure, the police investigation process, and how prosecutors and defense attorneys work within the system, as well as the role of public opinion in judicial practice. In recent years quite a number of wrongful convictions have come to light in China. However, there are few studies on this topic. One important reason for the difficulty in studying this topic lies in the subject itself. There is an old Chinese saying: “Do not wash your dirty linen in public” (家丑不可外扬). In a society where reputation is particularly crucial, there is no easy access to information concerning wrongful convictions. The author is a pioneer in conducting empirical studies on this subject, which enables him to elaborate this issue vividly and profoundly. With respect to the research methodology, the author provides a new way...