On January 18th, the People's Court of Sanmen County in Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province sentenced Jin Shengjie, former vice director of the Finance Bureau of Sanmen County, to 12 years in prison for accepting bribes. During the prosecution period, Jin Shengjie retracted his confession multiple times.
In August 2010, while investigating a case of embezzlement, the People's Procuratorate of Sanmen County discovered that Jin Shengjie, then serving as the vice director of the Finance Bureau of Sanmen County, was suspected of accepting bribes. The procuratorial organs investigated the case according to law. On August 20th, the People's Procuratorate of Taizhou City decided to arrest Jin Shengjie according to law. On November 12th, the People's Procuratorate of Sanmen County filed a public prosecution with the People's Court of Sanmen County according to law, accusing Jin Shengjie of using his positions as the head of the Agricultural Finance Department of the Finance Bureau of Sanmen County, Director of the Tax Inspection Bureau of the Local Taxation Bureau of Sanmen County, and Vice Director of the Finance Bureau of Sanmen County from 2001 to 2010 to seek various types of project funds and disbursements from higher-level finance departments, handle tax inspection cases, oversee the construction of the Sanmen County Tax and Finance Building infrastructure project, and other duties, repeatedly benefiting others and illegally accepting bribes totaling 510,000 yuan. The procuratorial organs accused Jin Shengjie of receiving bribes in nine separate instances, with the largest being 210,000 yuan.
On the morning of November 24th, 2010, the People's Court of Sanmen County held a trial for Jin Shengjie's bribery case. During the court proceedings, Jin Shengjie completely retracted his multiple guilty confessions made during the investigation phase and claimed that the investigators had engaged in deceptive and coercive interrogation methods. At the same time, seven important witnesses summoned by the court to testify, along with three other important witnesses who voluntarily requested to testify, all retracted their original testimonies given during the investigation phase by the procuratorial organs, unanimously stating that they had not given money to Jin Shengjie and accusing the procuratorial organs of illegal evidence collection.
In response to Jin Shengjie retracting his confession and the witnesses retracting their testimonies, the prosecutor from the People's Procuratorate of Sanmen County legally played synchronized recordings from the interrogations of Jin Shengjie to prove that there were no instances of illegal evidence collection by the procuratorial organs, refuting Jin Shengjie's defense with facts.
Starting on November 28th, posts about Jin Shengjie's bribery case appeared online, with the retraction of testimony by ten witnesses becoming one of the main reasons cited by post authors for calling for justice for Jin Shengjie.
On December 23rd, the People's Court of Sanmen County again held a trial for Jin Shengjie's bribery case, with the ten witnesses continuing to retract their testimonies. On January 18th this year, it was already the third trial for Jin Shengjie's bribery case. The court reviewed the entire synchronized recordings of the procuratorial organs' interrogations of Jin Shengjie and questioning of witnesses, finding no evidence of illegal evidence collection by the procuratorial organs. Based on this, the court determined that Jin Shengjie and the witnesses had no reasonable explanation or relevant evidence to support their retractions of confessions and testimonies, thus deeming them invalid. Jin Shengjie's confession during the investigation phase regarding accepting bribes could be corroborated with other evidence in this case, whereas his reasons for retracting his confession during the trial were insufficient and lacked corroboration from other evidence, so it was not accepted. The court believed that Jin Shengjie used his position to benefit others and illegally accepted property from others, which should be recognized as a crime of accepting bribes, fully adopting the prosecution opinions of the procuratorial organs, and making the above-mentioned legal judgment accordingly. (Reported by Jiu Lihua)