I. Prologue: Two Lives in a Cornfield
On August 5, 1994, a rape and murder occurred in a cornfield in Kongzhai Village in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang. The victim, Ms. Kang, a worker at the Shijiazhuang Hydraulic Parts Factory, was in her thirties. Crime scene examination showed that the perpetrator raped Ms. Kang and then strangled her to death with a shirt.
A month later, on September 23, Nie Shubin, a young man from Xia Nie Zhuang Village, Luquan City, Shijiazhuang, was taken away by the police. He was twenty years old and worked at the factory run by the Luquan Comprehensive Vocational Technical School. The police determined that he was the perpetrator in that cornfield. On October 9, Nie Shubin was approved for arrest.
From arrest to execution by firing squad, only seven months passed.
Ten years later, in January 2005, the police in Xingyang, Henan, captured a man from Guangping, Hebei, named Wang Shujin. During interrogation, Wang Shujin voluntarily confessed to multiple rape and murder cases, and one of them made the investigators pause: he said that in the summer of 1994, in a cornfield in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang, he had raped and killed a woman.
That cornfield had already been “closed” ten years earlier. The man identified as the perpetrator, Nie Shubin, had been executed on April 27, 1995.
One case, two perpetrators. Two clues that had long seemed settled suddenly collided at this moment. Over the following eleven years, Nie Shubin’s fate no longer depended solely on whether he himself had committed the crime, but increasingly on a man he had never met—Wang Shujin‘s confession—and on how the judicial authorities treated that confession.
II. The Original Trial: From Arrest to Execution (1994–1995)
(I) The Incident and the Arrest
On August 5, 1994, Ms. Kang was killed in a cornfield near Kongzhai Village in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang. On August 10, Ms. Kang’s father reported the case to the public security authorities. On August 11, Ms. Kang’s body was discovered. Through investigation, the public security authorities determined that Ms. Kang had been raped and killed by Nie Shubin.
On September 23, Nie Shubin was captured. Publicly available materials contain limited records of the specific arrest process, but the subsequent proceedings moved extremely quickly. On October 9, Nie Shubin was approved for arrest. The case soon entered the review for prosecution and trial stages.
(II) First Instance: Death Penalty
On March 15, 1995, the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court issued Criminal Incidental Civil Judgment No. 53 of 1995. The court found Nie Shubin guilty of intentional homicide and sentenced him to death; it found him guilty of rape and sentenced him to death, deciding to execute the death penalty.
The core facts found in the judgment were: at around 5 p.m. on August 5, 1994, Nie Shubin followed Ms. Kang, who was off work, on a bicycle, forced her off the bike, dragged her into the cornfield, beat her unconscious, raped her, and then used a floral-patterned top he carried with him to strangle her neck forcefully, causing her death by suffocation. This factual finding relied almost entirely on Nie Shubin’s guilty confession and the “consistency” between that confession and other evidence in the case file. The judgment did not record objective physical evidence sufficient to independently tie Nie Shubin to the crime.
Nie Shubin refused to accept the judgment and appealed.
(III) Second Instance and Execution
On April 25, 1995, the Hebei Provincial High People’s Court issued Criminal Incidental Civil Judgment No. 129 of 1995. The second instance upheld the conviction and sentencing for intentional homicide, revoked the death sentence for rape, and changed it to fifteen years’ imprisonment, deciding to execute the death penalty. Under the then-applicable provisions under which the Supreme People’s Court authorized high people’s courts to approve certain death penalty cases, the Hebei High People’s Court also approved Nie Shubin’s death sentence.
Two days later, on April 27, 1995, Nie Shubin was executed.
Nie Shubin’s family never believed he was the murderer. Over the following ten years, Nie Shubin’s mother, Zhang Huanzhi, began a long petition for retrial, but without any result. She later recalled that in those years she “understood nothing” and did not know how to petition; her materials were returned again and again.
III. The Turning Point: The Emergence of Wang Shujin (2005)
(I) Capture and Confession
On January 17, 2005, officers from the Suohe Road Police Station of the Xingyang City Public Security Bureau in Henan Province captured a man named Wang Shujin, a native of Guangping County, Hebei Province, during a public security check. After being brought in, Wang Shujin confessed to a series of rape and murder cases he had committed in Hebei, including the case in the cornfield in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang in August 1994.
Zheng Chengyue, deputy director of the Guangping County Public Security Bureau, led the interrogation. When leading Wang Shujin to Shijiazhuang to identify the scene, the Guangping police learned from the Shijiazhuang police that the “murderer” in that cornfield rape and murder case, Nie Shubin, had long since been executed. The situation of one case with two perpetrators thus surfaced.
(II) Media Disclosure and Official Response
In March 2005, Henan Business Daily published a report titled “One Case, Two Perpetrators: Who Is the Real Murderer?”, the earliest disclosure of the news that Wang Shujin might be the real perpetrator in the Nie Shubin case. More than a hundred media outlets nationwide followed up, and the Nie Shubin case re-entered public view ten years after his execution.
On the third day after the report was published, the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee established a working group responsible for reinvestigating the Nie case. The Hebei authorities promised to “reinvestigate and publish the truth as soon as possible.” But this “reinvestigation” produced no public conclusion for many years thereafter.
(III) The Judicial Process in Wang Shujin’s Case and the Stalemate in Nie’s Case
Wang Shujin‘s case itself entered the judicial process. On March 12, 2007, the Handan Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Wang Shujin to death in the first instance. However, neither the indictment nor the judgment involved the cornfield case in the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang. Wang Shujin refused to accept the judgment and appealed, on the very ground that he had confessed to the Shijiazhuang case but the prosecution had not charged him with it, and he believed this constituted major meritorious service and should result in a lighter punishment.
This created a peculiar litigation structure: the defendant insisted he was guilty, while the prosecution insisted the case had nothing to do with him. On September 27, 2013, the Hebei Provincial High People’s Court ruled on appeal to reject the appeal and uphold the original judgment.
Regarding the Shijiazhuang western suburbs case, the Hebei High People’s Court gave specific reasons for not recognizing it, including that Wang Shujin had not confessed to the key detail of the victim’s neck being wrapped with a floral shirt, that the stomping of the chest and abdomen he described was inconsistent with the autopsy report, that the time of the crime contradicted witness testimony, and that the description of the victim’s height did not match.
After Wang Shujin’s case entered death penalty review, it remained suspended for a long time. The petition in Nie Shubin’s case also fell into stagnation.
IV. Review: Designation of Another Jurisdiction and the Long Wait (2014–2016)
(I) The Supreme People’s Court Orders Review in Another Jurisdiction
On December 12, 2014, the Supreme People’s Court decided to instruct the Shandong Provincial High People’s Court to review the Nie Shubin case. The background to this decision was that the Hebei Provincial High People’s Court had long failed to initiate a retrial in response to the appeals of Nie Shubin’s family. Review in another jurisdiction meant removing the case from the original trial location and handing it to a court without historical baggage to examine it anew.
The Shandong High People’s Court immediately launched the review. In June, September, and December 2015, the review period was extended three times, each time for three months. The Shandong High People’s Court gave the reason that “the case is complex.” In February 2016, because the lawyers representing the petitioner submitted new evidence, the review was again extended to June 15, 2016.
During the review, the Shandong High People’s Court did a great deal of work. According to information later disclosed, the review team consulted all case files, traveled to Shijiazhuang to inspect the scene, questioned the original case-handling personnel, and commissioned appraisal institutions to examine relevant physical evidence. There was only one core issue in the review: whether the evidence on which the original judgment relied to find that Nie Shubin committed the crime met the standard of “reliable and sufficient.”
(II) The Review Conclusion
In June 2016, the Shandong High People’s Court completed the review. Its conclusion was: the original judgment lacked objective evidence capable of tying Nie Shubin to the crime; there were major doubts concerning the time of the defendant’s crime, the instrument of the crime, and the cause of the victim’s death; the evidence on which the conviction and sentencing were based was unreliable and insufficient; and the possibility that someone else committed the crime could not be excluded. The Shandong High People’s Court recommended that the Supreme People’s Court retry the case.
The Supreme People’s Court agreed with the Shandong High People’s Court’s opinion and decided on June 6, 2016, to take up the case for retrial. On June 20, it decided that the Second Circuit Court would hear it. On July 4, the collegial panel was formed, with Justice Hu YunTeng, a full-time member of the Supreme People’s Court Judicial Committee and president of the Second Circuit Court, serving as presiding judge.
V. Retrial: A Judgment Based on the Principle of In Doubt, for the Defendant (December 2, 2016)
(I) The Retrial Process
During the retrial, the collegial panel consulted all case files, traveled to Shijiazhuang to inspect the crime scene, verified relevant evidence, questioned the original case-handling personnel, consulted experts in criminal investigation and law, and met repeatedly with the petitioner and her representatives. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate formed a special task force, comprehensively reviewed the files, reexamined and verified the facts and evidence of the case, and questioned more than twenty relevant witnesses, producing more than 200,000 words of review notes. On November 26, 2016, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate sent a prosecutorial opinion to the Supreme People’s Court, explicitly stating that “the evidence in the original judgment finding Nie Shubin guilty of intentional homicide and rape is unreliable and insufficient, and he should be declared innocent in accordance with law.”
Given that Nie Shubin had already been executed, the Supreme People’s Court decided not to hold a court hearing.
(II) Reasons for the Judgment
On December 2, 2016, the Second Circuit Court of the Supreme People’s Court publicly pronounced judgment: the original judgments were revoked, and Nie Shubin was sentenced to not guilty.
The core logic of the judgment was: the main basis for the original finding that Nie Shubin was guilty was the “consistency” between his guilty confession and other evidence in the case file. But viewing the case as a whole, there was a lack of objective evidence capable of tying Nie Shubin to the crime. Specifically: the time of Nie Shubin’s crime could not be confirmed; the instrument of the crime could not be confirmed; the cause of the victim’s death could not be confirmed; the authenticity and legality of Nie Shubin’s guilty confession were questionable; the authenticity and reliability of the consistency between the guilty confession and other evidence in the file were questionable; and whether someone else committed the crime was also in doubt. The evidence on which the original judgment relied did not form a complete chain and did not meet the statutory standard of proof of reliable and sufficient evidence, nor did it meet the conviction requirement of basic facts being clear and basic evidence being conclusive.
The judgment also made an innovation in form: instead of listing the evidence, it directly analyzed and reasoned, displaying the evidence within the analysis. This approach was later evaluated as a model of “replacing the listing of evidence with analysis of evidence.”
It is worth noting that the retrial judgment did not find that Wang Shujin was the true perpetrator in this case. Nie Shubin was changed to innocent because the evidence in the original trial was insufficient, not because the court confirmed that another person had committed the crime. This distinction is legally crucial and also responds to the logic by which the court in Wang Shujin‘s case refused to find that he was the true perpetrator in the Nie case.
VI. State Compensation (2016–2017)
On December 14, 2016, Nie Shubin’s parents, Zhang Huanzhi and Nie Xuesheng, applied to the Hebei Provincial High People’s Court for state compensation totaling more than 13.91 million yuan, including 12 million yuan for mental distress.
After consultation, the Hebei High People’s Court issued State Compensation Decision No. 1 of 2016. The compensation items included: 1,264,820 yuan for death compensation and funeral expenses; 52,579.1 yuan for compensation for the infringement of Nie Shubin’s personal liberty before his death; 1.3 million yuan for mental distress; and a one-time payment of 64,000 yuan for Zhang Huanzhi’s living expenses. The total was 2,681,399.1 yuan.
Among these, the 1.3 million yuan for mental distress set a record at the time for the highest state compensation in a wrongful conviction case in China, exceeding the 1 million yuan in the earlier Hugjiltu case. The Hebei High People’s Court had previously publicly apologized through the media, and relevant personnel had also apologized to the compensation claimants in person on behalf of the court; the claimants therefore no longer insisted on the requests to eliminate influence and restore reputation.
The case was later listed as a typical case of state compensation. The reasons for inclusion noted that, on the basis of reaching agreement according to statutory standards on death compensation, funeral expenses, compensation for infringement of personal liberty, and living expenses, the case determined mental distress compensation through consultation, reflecting the state’s sincerity toward the victim’s relatives and its full protection of their relevant rights.
VII. Concluding Remarks: An Innocence Without a “True Perpetrator”
The Nie Shubin case has been legally concluded. But the questions it leaves behind are more complex than those in most wrongful conviction cases.
In the Hugjiltu case, the court found in the first instance that Zhao Zhihong was the true perpetrator of the Hugjiltu case, but the Supreme People’s Court did not confirm this during review. In the Nie Shubin case, Wang Shujin claimed to be the true perpetrator, the Hebei High People’s Court denied it, and the Supreme People’s Court, in the retrial, neither found that Wang Shujin was the true perpetrator nor found Nie Shubin guilty. Nie Shubin’s innocence was not because the “true perpetrator” had been found, but because the evidence used to convict him at the time did not hold up.
This conclusion leaves some people unsatisfied. If Wang Shujin was not the true perpetrator, then who was? If Nie Shubin was not the murderer, then what exactly happened in those few minutes in the cornfield? The law gave its answer: the evidence is insufficient, and it cannot be determined. This answer leaves those who pursue the truth feeling powerless, but it is precisely what Nie Shubin did not receive back then. In 1995, the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court and the Hebei High People’s Court found Nie Shubin guilty despite insufficient evidence; in 2016, the Supreme People’s Court declared him innocent under the same evidentiary conditions. What changed was not the evidence, but the standard.
Nie Shubin’s mother, Zhang Huanzhi, waited twenty-one years. She obtained a judgment of innocence, a sum of state compensation, and an apology. But she did not obtain an answer: why her son was taken away at twenty and executed seven months later, and why no one has ever been legally confirmed as the perpetrator of the truth in that cornfield.
Wang Shujin was executed in February 2021. To the end, he was never legally recognized by the court as the true perpetrator in the Nie Shubin case. Nie Shubin was executed in April 1995. To the end, he was never legally recognized by the court as innocent. Both men are dead—one died for his crimes, the other for a mistake. And that cornfield, like those few minutes in the women’s restroom in the Hugjiltu case, has been left in a place beyond the reach of evidence.