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The Man Who Spent 25 Years in Jail for a Murder That He Didn’t Do
The longest known period of wrongful imprisonment in Chinese history
Liu Zhonglin, a farmer in Jilin’s northern county of Dongliao, was detained in 1990 on suspicion of murdering a lady whose corpse was discovered in a river in the area.
Local police recognized Liu, who was 22 years old at the time, as a murder suspect and charged him with deliberate homicide.
Liu said that authorities tortured him during the 11-day questioning. His interrogators whipped him and pierced his fingernails with toothpicks in an attempt to coerce him into confessing. Additionally, he stated that he was shackled to shackles weighing up to 15 kg (33 pounds).
The torture shattered one of his toes, which developed an infection severe enough that he was forced to have his lower right leg amputated.
Liu finally pled guilty, and his sentence was commuted to 25 years in jail with a two-year suspension. He was imprisoned for a record-breaking 9,215 days before being released in January 2016.
