A Chinese man who killed a village official with a nail gun after his home was forcibly demolished was executed yesterday, a court said, despite a public outcry over his condemnation, reports AFP.
Jia Jinglong killed his village chief in the northern province of Hebei last year, state media said. Lawyers and online commenters had called for Jia’s sentence to be commuted on the grounds that the demolition of his home by local officials constituted extenuating circumstances, and because he confessed to the crime.
The house was pulled down just weeks before his wedding day in 2013, the state-run Global Times reported previously, adding he was beaten and denied compensation.
Tuesday’s edition of the paper carried another report on legal experts urging the execution be halted in a letter to China’s Supreme People’s Court, citing “mismanagement” in rural areas and inadequate judicial procedures. But the Intermediate People’s Court in Shijiazhuang said on a verified social media account: “The execution of the murderer Jia Jinglong has been carried out.”
Before being put to death Jia met his relatives “according to the law”, the official news agency Xinhua said.
Neither the court nor Xinhua specified how Jia was killed, but executions in China are believed generally to be carried out by lethal injection.