HER FATHER killed her mother with a hammer and was sentenced to death, but now a 10-year-old girl wants China’s highest court to spare her father’s life so she will not become an orphan.
Wang Junbao, a 36-year-old village doctor from central Henan province, killed his 31-year-old spouse, Feng Li, in March 2007 when a family quarrel over a faulty air conditioner in his clinic turned violent. Wang subsequently tried to commit suicide, but failed, local media reported, and was arrested. He was sentenced to death for voluntary manslaughter in December 2007.
Their daughter, Wang Senjin, known as Jin Jin, has travelled from Henan to Beijing and has appealed to China’s Supreme Court for a reprieve.
“I have lost my mother and I cannot afford to lose my father. I don’t want to become an orphan,” she said.
It’s a case that has divided public opinion in China, which executes more people than any other country and where there is a lot of sympathy for the death sentence.
An online survey by the Sina.com website showed nearly 64 per cent of the 23,781 people polled were sympathetic to the girl and hoped the death sentence would be commuted to life.
Another 31 per cent disagreed and said that those who killed people should pay for the murders with their own lives.
After her mother’s death and her father’s incarceration, Jin Jin was passed around from relative to relative before being sent to a special home for the children of prisoners.
She appealed to the director of the home to be allowed contact a lawyer, Shen Teng, and they travelled to Beijing to appeal against the death penalty.
“From my meetings with him, to letters left for his daughter, the murderer has repeatedly expressed his love for his dead wife and regrets his stupid impulse leading to the murder,” Shen was quoted as saying.
A death sentence review in China is carried out behind closed doors, and can last for a few months or even longer, depending on the circumstances of each case.
“We have to make clear whether the father had abused the mother for a long time and we also have to consider the opinions of the relatives of the deceased,” an unnamed official told the China Daily.
While numbers of executions are a state secret, the Dui Hua Foundation, a San Francisco- based group that works to free Chinese political prisoners, reckons the figure in 2007 was between 5,000 and 6,000, compared to 8,000 the previous year.
Another lawyer, Zhao Xiaolu, was quoted by China Daily as saying. “If he doesn’t receive capital punishment, there will be even more harm done to society. We cannot sacrifice justice and equality for mercy.”