China to review murder case 19 years after execution

China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) has decided to review a rape-murder case 19 years after the convict was executed, as another man insisted that he is guilty.

The Shandong Higher People's Court will review the case of Nie Shubin and Wang Shujin, Xinhua reported Friday. Nie was executed in 1995 at the age of 21 for the 1994 rape and murder of a woman in Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang.

Wang Shujin, 47, was apprehended by police in 2005 for three unconnected rapes and murders, and confessed to the rape and murder of the same woman in Nie's case.

Wang, sentenced to death in March 2007, claimed that he raped and murdered a woman in a cornfield on the outskirts of Shijiazhuang in 1994 and Nie was innocent. The Hebei Higher People's Court, which approved the death penalty on Nie in 1995, did not believe his claim in a retrial last year and Nie's verdict still stands.

Wang's claims have raised public questions of judicial impartiality.

The review of Nie's case is aimed at "ensuring judicial fairness and responding to public concerns", according to the SPC's announcement.