Related criminal rulings. Photo courtesy of respondents
In the five years since the incident, Su Mingshuang, the son of Su Jifeng, one of the two defendants, has been rushing for this case. Knowing the news that he was sent back for retrial, he said, "I feel very peaceful, and sending back for retrial is the expected result."
Two old men were accused of murder and sinking their bodies. In the first instance, the court said that they were tortured to extract confessions.
20 17 1 1 month, a corpse sinking case occurred in Yulin Village, Zhuanbu Town, yinan county, Linyi City, Shandong Province. Su, a villager, was tied with backhand, and his ankle was tied with hollow bricks, and he fell into yi river and died. Cousins Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng, who are nearly seventy years old, were identified by the police as being suspected of committing major crimes.
20 18 12 2 1, the case was heard in the first instance. According to the judgment of the first instance, the public prosecutor accused Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng of fishing in Su's cage at 20 1 year1month1day 1 1. Because of the small amount of fishing, they decided to fish in Sue's cage, and Sue insulted them when she found out. After that, Su Qifeng and Su Xiaofeng discussed to teach Su a lesson. After Su Xiaofeng agreed, he rowed the boat to Sue's boat. Su Jifeng hit Su's headrest with a wooden stick while Su was unprepared, causing him to die of severe craniocerebral injury. They tied Sue's body with hollow bricks and sank it into the deep water near Gegou Irrigation District on the east side of the Yihe River. Then they rowed to the north, threw the fishing nets and other items on the Su Xiaotie boat into the water, and sank the small iron boat into the water.
Gegou bridge near the incident. On the day of the incident, Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng used to fish in the waters north of Qiaobei. Beijing News reporter Li
In court, Su Jifeng's defense lawyer suggested that the location where the two defendants confessed to sinking Su Xiaotie was different from the location recorded in the on-site investigation transcript of yinan county Public Security Bureau, with a difference of more than 200 meters. In this regard, the court held that the estimated confession made by the two defendants was influenced by the visibility at the time of committing the crime, the water surface factor and the inner thoughts at the time of confession, and the distance was inconsistent with the on-site investigation with strong accuracy of the public security organ, which did not affect the identification of the facts of this case.
Regarding the lack of the most critical crime tools in this case, the court held that the existing evidence was sufficient to determine that the two defendants had committed the act of killing people and sinking bodies. Due to the special location of the case, the fact that no tools were found does not affect the determination of the facts of the case.
In view of the fact that the two defendants argued that "they were forced to write a guilty confession by torture at the Interpol", at the trial of the first instance, the defense lawyer applied for the audio and video of the police inquiry, and the answer was that "the police station had no electricity" and there was no complete synchronous audio and video. 2065438+On May 23, 2009, the public security organ supplemented the case description of "Monitoring equipment circuit problem leads to equipment shutdown".
The Linyi Intermediate People's Court held that the two defendants had multiple complete guilty confessions after entering the detention center, and the sources of evidence were legal, which should be used as the basis for conviction. Therefore, the defense opinion of "there is no complete video in this case" put forward by the defender cannot be established and will not be adopted.
On August 3rd, 2065438, KLOC-0, the case was pronounced in the first instance, and Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng were found guilty of intentional homicide and sentenced to death and life imprisonment respectively. Both of them appealed the verdict.
On August 26th, 20021year, Shandong Higher People's Court held a trial in the second instance of Linshu County Court. At the scene of the trial, the prosecution and the defense had a heated debate on the time of death of the victim, the time of the incident, whether the key evidence was in doubt, whether there was a confession by torture, and whether the two suspects were real murderers. Five and a half days later, the trial of the second instance ended and the case was not pronounced in court.
On August 26th, 20021year, the Shandong Provincial High Court heard the case in the second instance of Linshu County People's Court. Beijing News reporter Li
On June 23, 2022, Feng, one of the defense lawyers in this case, received the criminal ruling issued by Shandong Higher People's Court on June 24, 2022. The Higher People's Court of Shandong Province held that the facts of the original judgment were unclear and the evidence was insufficient. After discussion and decision by the plenary session of the Judicial Committee, the criminal judgment was revoked in accordance with the provisions of the first paragraph of Article 236 of the Criminal Procedure Law of People's Republic of China (PRC) and sent back to the Intermediate People's Court of Linyi City for retrial.
There are still many arguments in the second trial, and whether the time of committing the crime is the focus.
Whether Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng have time to commit crimes is one of the focuses of debate in the second trial of this case. The monitoring on the day of the incident showed that Su Jifeng and Su Xiaofeng spent 43 minutes online during the day and 2 hours online at night 1 2 minutes, 29 minutes more than during the day.
"It takes longer to go online than to go offline, and factors such as inconvenience at night and their age should also be taken into account." Feng told the Beijing News reporter that their on-the-spot investigation and demonstration found that within 29 minutes, the two old people could not complete the process of stealing fish, confronting each other, chasing rivers, finding bricks, killing people, binding and sinking corpses.
Su Mingshuang, the son of Su Jifeng, went to the Yihe River to do experiments in March and August, 2020, and found that it took more than 100 minutes to close the net. Accordingly, he believes that "it is not only difficult to complete in time, but also impossible to throw the body. If two old people stand on one side of the boat together and bend over at the same time, their boat will enter the water. "
Su Mingshuang's experimental video was shown in court. The prosecution thinks there is something wrong with the experiment. As an investigation experiment, the experimenter is not suitable, and there is a gap between the experimental wooden boat and the actual boat. In addition, "the proof of close relatives is also weak."
Schematic diagram of the key location at the time of the crime. Photo courtesy of respondents
The public security organs have also conducted investigations and experiments on this, and the results obtained are completely opposite to those of Su Mingshuang. The conclusion of the investigation experiment shows that they have enough time to commit crimes after 20 minutes off the net, 20 minutes off the net, 28 minutes rowing and 20 seconds sinking. Su Xiaofeng's second-instance defense lawyer He Zhijuan said that the conclusion of the investigation experiment was not credible. "Monitoring shows that the two old people used 1 hour for 43 minutes. This is not controversial, but the investigation experiment only took 20 minutes, which is enough to show that the investigation experiment cannot be used as a basis for finalization. "
He Zhijuan believes that the conditions of the experiment are different from the key conditions on the day of the incident. The investigation experiment was conducted during the day and the incident occurred at night; The rower in the investigation experiment is a young professional fisherman, while the rower in this case is Su Xiaofeng, who has presbyopia and has only one or two rowing experiences.
During the court debate on 20021August 3 1 Sunday, Su Xiaofeng told the court that on the day of the incident, he put another villager's "wide net" into the water in addition to his six fishing nets. In the evening, he didn't take the net, but "checked it from one end to the other and found no fish". The presiding judge said that Su Xiaofeng's speech involved new facts and immediately resumed the court investigation. Su Jifeng's second-instance defense lawyer Feng told the Beijing News reporter that this fact will further prove that the two did not have enough time to commit crimes.
In addition, in the court of second instance, Su Jifeng's defense lawyer Feng thought that the autopsy pictures and words were vague and contradictory, and questioned the time of death of the deceased issued in the judicial expertise opinion.
Feng said that from the existing testimony, it can only be inferred that the time of death of the victim is 20 1 71,10/0/20: 00 on the day, 10/2/65438+. However, apart from the monitoring in the afternoon and evening, the public security organs did not collect other time periods of the day and a reasonable range near the incident.
Feng said that there are still many problems in this case, such as the lack of wooden sticks, the obvious inconsistency between the iron boat salvaged by investigators and the iron boat lost by the victim, and the prosecution deliberately concealed the daytime video of the crime area.
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