In Depth: Giving China’s Death Row Inmates a Second Chance

By Qin Jianhang, Tan Haiyan and Kelly Wang

The Legal Aid Law passed by China’s legislature in August 2021 requires justice departments at the county-level or higher to establish legal aid agencies.

Death row convict Wang Xiangxiang was given a second chance to plead his innocence at the highest court in China after finding a lawyer who would defend him pro bono. The Supreme People’s Court disapproved his sentence after reviewing the case and sent it back to the provincial high court for a retrial due to “unclear facts and insufficient evidence.”

After taking the case in January 2019, Wang’s lawyer Xie Tongxiang received the top court’s decision four years later in February and learned that Wang’s anklets had been removed — a sign that he has returned to being a suspect in the case of a double murder.