Handcuffs Photo: CFP

A court in Northwest China's Gansu Province on Wednesday heard a case involving a 13-year-old boy accused of killing an 8-year-old girl. The case drew significant public interest as it marked one of the first cases following the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility by China's top procuratorate. 

Xiaohua (alias), an 8-year-old girl from a village in Gansu Province was killed in 2022. The defendant is a boy who was born in 2009 and was 13 years and 7 months old at the time of the murder. 

The victim's father, surnamed Gong, said his daughter's body was also mutilated by the murderer and her remains were stabbed in several places with a knife. 

This is a criminal case approved by the Supreme People's Procuratorate after the age of criminal responsibility was lowered, in which the defendant was between 12 and 14 years old at the time of the offence. 

The Supreme People's Procuratorate gave consent to pursue criminal liability for the defendant in December 2023, according to thepaper.com, and the defendant was prosecuted for intentional homicide in February. 

According to China's Criminal Law, which came into effect on March 1, 2021, a person who has reached the age of 12 but not yet 14, who commits the crime of intentional homicide or intentional injury resulting in death or causing serious injury resulting in serious disability by particularly cruel means, and whose case has been approved by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, shall be criminally liable. 

Gong asked the court to investigate the defendant's criminal responsibility for intentional homicide and to impose a heavier penalty according to the law, ordering the defendant and his parents to pay nearly 1.4 million yuan ($200,000) in damages, including 796,660 yuan in death compensation and 47,115 yuan in funeral expenses, according to a report by thepaper.com. 

The defendant prepared the tools for the crime in advance before murdering the girl in a wasteland area, resulting in extremely bad social impact and causing serious mental trauma for the victim's family, Gong claimed.

Xiaohua's father proposed life imprisonment for the defendant since he said that the boy has so far shown no remorse.

Global Times