A teenager was sentenced to life in prison for killing his colleague in Beijing on Monday, capsing a case that sparked a national debate about how juvenile offenders are treated.
Three offenders, all aged under 14 at the time of the death, were accused in April of bullying a 13-year-old student surnamed Wang over a long period before killing him in an abandoned house.
The gloomy details of the case, where Wang allegedly was attacked with a screwdriver before being buried, attracted the attention of the public.
One child surnamed Zhang, was found guilty of purposeful killing, a jury in northwest China’s Hebei said Monday.
Another child by the name of Li received 12 years in prison. The court gave the victim a penitentiary education sentence for the third boy, named Ma, who the court determined did not harm the victim.
China reduced the penalty time for” special circumstances” like inflicting dying by “extremely cruel methods” from 14 to 12 in 2021.
The Hebei event, according to some, was the first to use the lower years cap.
According to Chinese law, the prosecution ruled in its decision that the plaintiffs may bear legal responsibility because they were “over the age of 12 but under the period of 14 at the time of the violence.”
The killing’s methods were “particularly callous, and the conditions were specially horrible,” it continued.
Death is punished by imprisonment or the death penalty under Chinese rules.
