A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a teenage boy to life in prison for killing his classmate, ending a case that sparked a national debate over the treatment of juvenile offenders. The three suspects, all under the age of 14 at the time of the murder, were charged in April with bullying a 13-year-old classmate surnamed Wang over a long period of time before killing him in an abandoned greenhouse.
The grim details of the case, in which the killers reportedly attacked Wang with a shovel before burying his body, have drawn public attention to how the law treats juveniles accused of serious crimes.
One boy, surnamed Zhang, was found guilty of premeditated murder, a court in northern China's Hebei province said on Monday.
Another boy named Lee received 12 years in prison. The third boy named Ma, whom the court found did not harm the victim, was sentenced to correctional education.
In 2021, China lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 for “special cases” such as causing death by “extremely violent means”.
The Hebei case was considered one of the first to apply a lower age limit.
Prosecutors said that because the defendants were “above the age of 12 but below the age of 14 at the time of the crime … they should be held criminally responsible” under Chinese law.
It added that the means of killing were “particularly cruel and the circumstances particularly gruesome.”
Under Chinese law, murder is punishable by prison terms or the death penalty.
Editor's note: The headline of this article has been corrected to reflect that the convicted teenager was sentenced to life in prison, not the death penalty.