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Prosecutors in Anfu county, East China's Jiangxi Province, has lodged an appeal against a local court's ruling for giving "excessive punishment" after the court sentenced a teenager to 10 years in prison for intentional assault, a verdict that has sparked heated debates online as the teenager killed a person after being besieged by a knife-wielding gang group.  

The 16-year-old teenager, surnamed Wu, was beaten up by a gang of eight people led by a man surnamed Wang in a local hotel room in May 2020. The fight broke out after Wu, according to Wang, "spoke to him with a bad attitude," Jimu News, a subsidiary under Hubei Daily, reported on Saturday. 

During the fight, Wu took out a fruit knife and stabbed those who were beating him in their stomachs and shoulders. 

Three men injured by the knife were soon sent to a local hospital, but one person, surnamed Luo, died of severe injury. Another two were wounded. Wu and Luo's families reached a settlement with a compensation of 200,000 yuan ($30,762). Wu was detained by police a few days after. 

During the court trial of first instance, the people's procuratorate of Anfu county believed that Wu's behavior was excessive self-defense. The people's court found that Wu's act of stabbing was self-defensive in nature, but excessive force had been used to repel the attack than it was reasonably necessary.

The court's ruling came on May 31, 2020, charging Wu of committing intentional assault and affray, and sentencing him to 10 years in prison.

The people's procuratorate of Anfu county then filed a protest against the court's judgments this June, Jimu News reported, saying that after reviewing the case, it believed the punishment was overly heavy and improper, read a statement provided by the procuratorate. 

The statement said that Wu's killing of one person is self-defensive in nature but has led to severe damages, therefore it should be considered as excessive self-defense. But given that Wu was under age when he committed the crime and confessed his misdeeds voluntarily, the ruling should have given him a lighter punishment. 

Wu's mother and his lawyer believed that Wu's self-defense was completely reasonable as he was confronted and threatened by a gang of eight people who were carrying knives. The second instance of court trial will be proceeded at the Intermediate People's Court of Ji'an, Jiangxi, the city that administrate the Anfu county, on August 31. 

The case has drawn heated discussions on the internet, triggering over 220 million views in less than 24 hours on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Sunday. Netizens expressed their sympathy to Wu and urged further investigation of the case. 

Global Times