On this date in 1996, a Chinese Mongol with the singular name of Huugjilt was executed by gunshot for rape and murder at Hohhot. With benefit of hindsight, it’s come to be viewed as “one of the most notorious cases of judicial injustice in China.”

Huugjilt discovered the body of a woman named Yang in a public toilet at a factory, on April 9, 1996 — just 62 days before the execution. She’d been raped and strangled, and that official tunnel vision common to wrongful conviction scenarios immediately zeroed in on Huugjilt himself. With conviction quotas to fulfill, authorities abused Huugjilt into a confession and an overhasty conclusion.

“It has not been rare for higher authorities to exert pressure on local public security departments and judiciary to crack serious murder cases,” China Daily editorialized. “Nor has it been rare for the police to extort confessions through torture. And suspects have been sentenced without solid evidence except for extorted confessions.”

This conviction unraveled in 2005 when a serial sex predator named Zhao Zhihong admitted the murder. (He was charged with many similar crimes besides.) The belated investigations ensuing from the resulting uproar cleared Huugjilt, even to the extent of holding a formal posthumous retrial that overturned the original verdict.

On this day..

• 1566: Bartholome Tecia, Geneva sodomite
• 1697: The Paisley Witches
• 1863: Not Nathaniel Pruitt, reprieved deserter
• 2015: Aftab Bahadur Masih, "I just received my Black Warrant"
• 1822: Armand Valle, carbonari plotter
• 1902: Hirsh Lekert, Jewish assassin
• 1944: Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane
• 1896: Amelia Dyer, baby farmer
• 1876: Kenneth Brown, father of Edith Cowan
• 1692: Bridget Bishop, the first Salem witch hanging
• 1942: The village of Lidice, for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
• 1358: Guillaume Cale, leader of the Jacquerie