Courts award $800m for wrongful verdicts

China has awarded 5 billion yuan ($800 million) in compensation for cases of wrongful rulings during the past 20 years, the top court revealed on Wednesday.

Courts dealt with 134,000 cases claiming State compensation between January 1995 and November last year. Decisions have been reached on 125,000 of the cases, and 5.16 billion yuan ordered to be paid in compensation.

Zhou Qiang, president of the court, urged all courts across the country to file and hear cases about State compensation in a timely manner when he spoke at a symposium to honor the 20th anniversary of the enforcement of State Compensation Law.

"We must remove the obstacles for the defendants to appeal and for the innocent to get compensated," Zhou said.

State Compensation Law came into force on Jan 1, 1995 and since then citizens have the rights to apply for State compensation if they are unduly harmed through the actions of government and judicial bodies, including wrongful detention and wrongful verdicts.

Last Thursday the family of a man wrongfully executed 18 years ago were awarded 2.05 million yuan in compensation.

The parents of Hugjiltu, an 18-year-old of the Mongolian ethnic group, received the compensation that includes funeral expenses, recompense for detaining their son for 61 days, and compensation for his death and his parents' loss.

In 1996, Hugjiltu was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a woman in a public toilet in Hohhot. He was executed 62 days after being charged, despite doubts about the evidence.

Zhao Zhihong, 42, who claimed in 2005 he was the actual killer in the case, was tried at Hohhot Intermediate People's Court on Monday, three weeks after Hugjiltu's name was cleared. The trial will continue for another two days but the court session related to the rape and murder charge will not be open to the public for privacy reasons.

Zhao confessed to the murder and rape for which Hugjiltu was convicted in 1996 during a trial to correct wrongful charges and verdicts on Wednesday. Hugjiltu, a resident from Inner Mongolia autonomous region, was wrongly charged with rape and murder and quickly sentenced to death in 1996.

Last year, courts across the country corrected 12 cases of wrongful verdicts, in which victims and their families had fought for years to overturn the initial rulings.

In 2013, courts awarded 87.35 million yuan in compensation for 2,045 cases. In 2012, State compensation of about 50 million yuan was paid for 2,035 cases.