Court gives death penalty to Yu again

60-year-old accused of abducting 17 children is given no reprieve in retrial

The Guiyang Intermediate People's Court on Friday pronounced death sentence to Yu Huaying, a 60-year-old woman who was found guilty of child trafficking and abduction, after a retrial in Guizhou province.

The Guiyang court, while announcing the conviction and death sentence to the accused, also stripped of her political rights for life and ordered that all her personal assets be confiscated.

The court identified that Yu, between 1993 and 2003, abducted 17 children in Guizhou, Chongqing and Yunnan province along with her accomplices Gong Xianliang and Wang Jiawen, and then sold the victims to Handan in Hebei province for financial gains.

Gong died during the course of the case, and Wang, Yu's husband, pleaded guilty to the crime while standing trial in Yunnan last month.

The Guiyang court said that the abduction and trafficking had separated 12 families, making some parents spend years searching for their children or even die of depression.

"Considering the malice of Yu was extremely deep, and the circumstance of her criminal behaviors was extremely serious and the consequence of the crime was extremely severe, we imposed the death penalty on her," it added.

In September last year, the Guiyang court sentenced Yu to death for her offenses, while identifying 11 victims then. Yu moved an appeal to the Guizhou High People's Court at that time.

Early this year, the high court sent the case back to the lower court for a retrial, explaining that some details about the case were omitted in the original ruling.

During the retrial by the Guiyang court on Oct 11, the omitted content referred to six more children who were abducted and trafficked by Yu, taking the total number of victims to 17.

"The retrial was due to the discovery of new suspicious criminal facts that required judges to re-establish the exact number of abducted children, which is in line with the Criminal Procedure Law," Cheng Lei, deputy head of the Renmin University of China's Law School, told China Central Television.

Although Yu had already been given the capital punishment, "the six newly identified victims and their families also need to get the justice, which is also why the case was retried," he added.

However, Yu appealed to a higher court again after the ruling was announced on Friday.

Yu and her case caught widespread public attention since 2022 when police in Guiyang received a complaint from Yang Niuhua, alleging she was snatched by Yu in Guizhou and taken to Hebei in 1995. Soon after her complaint, police captured Yu from Chongqing.

Yang, who was also present at the Guiyang court on Friday, said, "I burst into tears when hearing Yu was sentenced to death."

"Yu said nothing other than that she would appeal. She kept her head down and hands shaking as the verdict was read," Yang added.