Supreme People's Court authorizes new trial for man in 2004 homicide

China's top court has instructed Henan Provincial High People's Court to retry a decade-old case in which a man was convicted of poisoning a boy to death, the man's lawyer and daughter said on Tuesday.

"Evidence in the original ruling to prove Wu Chunhong's conviction was not sufficient, so we decided to send the case to the provincial court to have a retrial after a review", the Supreme People's Court said in a statement.

Wu's daughter, Wu Lili, said she received the decision on Oct 3, and she showed the statement to China Daily on Tuesday morning.

"Although the final result is pending, the retrial still made our family excited and brought us hope," she said.

In November 2004, a 3-year-old boy from Minquan county in the province's Shangqiu city died of poisoning. His elder brother suffered poison-related injuries. Several days later, Wu Chunhong was criminally detained and named as the suspect.

In 2005, Wu was first sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for intentional homicide at the Intermediate People's Court in Shangqiu, but the ruling was withdrawn by the high people's court after the defendant's appeal.

In the following two years, the intermediate people's court gave the same judgment twice to Wu, after the high people's court twice sent back the case for rehearing.

In 2008, the lower court sentenced Wu to life in prison on the same charge, but this time, the higher court upheld the ruling and rejected the man's appeals.

In 2016, Wu's family appealed to the country's top court, "because I believed my father's innocence, and there was no physical evidence to prove he gave out the poison," she added.

Li Changqing, Wu Chunhong's lawyer, said he had given a copy of the top court's retrial decision to his client on Monday, adding they are now awaiting retrial in the high people's court.