China’s top court has ordered that compensation for “mental anguish” paid to a man wrongfully convicted of murder be increased by 76% to 1.2 million yuan, the most ever awarded for damages of this nature.
The Supreme People’s Court Compensation Committee on Friday ruled Wu Chunhong, from Central China’s Henan province who had spent more than 15 years in prison before his guilty verdict was overturned for lack of evidence, should be granted an additional 520,000 yuan for his suffering on top of the 680,000 yuan he has already been pledged.
The decision was made after the Supreme People’s Court issued a judicial interpretation in March raising the amount of compensation a person can receive for mental anguish from 35% of total compensation for “damage to personal liberty, life and health safety” to 50% or even more in serious cases. It also marks the first time a decision based on the revised law has been taken and made public.
The 51-year-old Wu’s long road from conviction to vindication began in November 2004, when two boys in the village of Zhougang in Shangqiu, Henan, were sickened after eating flour containing rat poison at home, one of whom died. Weeks later, Wu, who had worked in the village, was arrested and eventually convicted of intentional homicide. Wu was eventually declared innocent by the Henan High People’s Court last April, with the court overturning the original sentence and acquitting Wu due to “unclear facts and insufficient evidence.”
Despite the victory, this is far lower than the more than 18 million yuan Wu previously had sought before the Henan High People’s Court, including in part more than 9.7-million-yuan for infringement of personal freedom and 5 million yuan for mental anguish.