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A female Chinese death-row inmate (handcuffed, center)
spends her last hours with fellow inmates prior to being
led to a nearby execution ground. (File photo) |
The Chinese
Supreme People’s Court has overturned a death sentence imposed on a woman who killed her husband after years of abuse, in a decision women’s rights advocates and death penalty opponents hailed as a major step forward for women and the rule of law in China. The court ruled that the case must be retried.
Ms. Li, 43, was sentenced to death in 2011 by the Zhiyang Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan for killing her husband, Tan Yong, in 2010. She beat him to death with an air gun he attacked her with during an argument. This followed a pattern of abuse, including stubbing out cigarettes on her body, banging her head against the wall and locking her outside on the balcony in the winter, her brother said in an
interview last year.
What Ms. Li did after she killed her husband was also extreme — she cut him up and boiled parts of him, and then alerted neighbors in Anyue County to what she had done.
After her death sentence was announced, women’s rights advocates across China appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn it, arguing that Ms. Li was not in her right mind and was suffering from a condition known as “abused women’s syndrome.” Mr. Li said that during her marriage his sister had sought help from the police, the Women’s Federation, the local government and hospitals, but that each one had referred her to another organization, with many advising her to endure it.
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Source: The New York Times, June 24, 2014
