Beijing (AsiaNews) - Chinese courts "should rule based on actual evidence. It's preferable to release someone wrongfully, than convict someone wrongfully. If we continue like this, we will have to face one of the biggest challenges to the legitimacy of our legal system," said Shen Deyong, executive vice-president of the Supreme People's Court, and not some run-of-the-mill dissident.
In recent months, a number of convictions that turned out to be baseless have enraged the public. China's courts, although defined by the nation's constitution as "independent of all other powers", is in fact a tool of the Communist Party, which uses it to "solve" issues related to human and civil rights of the population.
In an article in the People's Court Daily, the official paper of the Supreme Court, Shen said this should stop. "If a true criminal is released, heaven will not collapse, but if an unlucky citizen is wrongfully convicted, heaven will fall."
For Shen, "Wrongful convictions are often the result of given orders, an abandonment of principles or sloppy dereliction of duty". If these things should happen in the West, "the professional stigma" would not "be washed away in a lifetime".
Criminal trials in China had a conviction rate of 99.9 per cent in 2009. In recent months, a series of outrageous cases of miscarriages of justice have come to light and angered ordinary Chinese.
On 26 March, after 10 years the Supreme Court of Zhejiang Province overturned a guilty verdict for two men jailed for the murder of a woman in Hangzhou.
In April, it was reported that a farmer was wrongfully sentenced to death with reprieve in 2008 in Zhecheng, Henan province.
Also in Zhecheng, a convicted murderer gained prominence in 2010, when his purported victim returned to the village and Zhao's death sentence had to be overturned.
As a result, Henan last year started to hold judges responsible for their rulings even after retirement to reduce the number of miscarriages of justice.
Shen's article "is a good statement", said Teng Biao, a law lecturer at the China University of Politics and Law in Beijing. "It's progress," he added with a cautionary note. "These are likely to be just personal views. Even if the courts are changing, they remain restrained by public security organs and the [Communist Party's] Politics and Law Committees."
For several years, dissidents, human rights activists and even Communist Party elders called on the government not to interfere with the judicial system and ensure its independence.
In December 2012, a group of 71 lawyers wrote an open letter to the government on this issue, that appears to have been completely ignored.