吴英集资案重审改判死缓(英文)

2dmin

Wu Ying at the Intermediate People’s Court of Jinhua in 2009.


The Wall Street Journal (WSJ ) May 21 - Call it a birthday gift: One of China’s most most famous convicts – a woman who turned 31 on Sunday – got a reprieve on her death sentence on Monday.

A high court in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, acting on the guidance of China’s Supreme People’s Court, said it has changed the capital sentence it originally imposed on Wu Ying to death with a two-year stay, the official Xinhua news agency said (in Chinese).

The two-year reprieve is common practice in China as a prelude to actual commutation of the death sentence. Zhang Yanfeng, Wu’s lawyer, told China Real Time that the sentence will be commuted to life in prison if Wu doesn’t commit any additional and intentional offenses during this time. “In some cases, the life-in-prison sentence itself can be reduced, but that depends on what happens after this period,” he said in a brief telephone interview.

Wu Ying was a businesswoman of uncommon fortunes. Once ranked as China’s sixth richest woman, according to wealth-trackers Hurun, she was known for turning a single beauty salon into a regional business conglomerate. She was sentenced to death in 2009 on charges of having bilked 11 investors of 380 million yuan ($60.3 million) – a loss her lawyers said stemmed from her participation in China’s burgeoning informal lending market.

The case attracted widespread media attention for the severity of the sentence and the long-running campaign in China’s blogosphere to save her.

Many of her supporters wondered aloud why she was facing death when corrupt officials found guilty of similar crimes were often granted lighter sentences.

Last month, in an usual decision foreshadowed by Premier Wen Jiabao’s remark a month earlier that the government was taking “an extremely cautious attitude toward the Wu Ying case,” China’s top court all but threw out the Zhejiang verdict, ordering the lower court to reconsider. On Monday, the Zhejiang authorities made it official.

For the public that’s kept the issue alive for more than three years, it’s a gratifying conclusion. “It’s not just Wu Ying,” Wang Shuo, a prominent magazine editor, wrote on the Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo. “If it’s non-violent financial crime, no one should die.”

“Wu Ying was unlucky to run into hole in the legal system,” added another Sina Weibo user writing under the handle Chaoxin Xinzhixing. “When will China’s legal system be more robust, so the public can be convinced?”