Jail term upheld for suicide instigator

A court in Shandong province has denied the appeal of a man who pleaded not guilty to the crime of intentional homicide by instigating another man to take his own life, Prosecutors' Daily reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper, managed by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said on its social media account that the five-year prison sentence handed down to the defendant surnamed Feng was upheld. The sentence was imposed by a lower-level court in the province in April.

According to prosecutors, police in Licheng district of Jinan, Shandong, received multiple calls on Dec 1, 2021, saying that a man surnamed Ma may have taken his own life in a hotel room. The callers had seen messages Ma had scheduled to be sent after his death.

Police initially ruled out the possibility of foul play, as there were no signs of breaking and entering in his hotel room.

However, police later found on Ma's WeChat account that he had had extensive conversations with a contact about suicide before taking his own life.

Chat records showed that the contact had elaborated on ways of committing suicide and had instigated and pushed him to do so as soon as possible. The contact even attempted to confirm multiple times whether Ma had taken his own life after he killed himself.

The police later identified the contact as Feng, from Chengdu, Sichuan province, and who had met Ma online a week prior. Police detained Feng on Dec 3 that year.

Further investigation showed that Feng searched for articles online on depression and suicide in November and December that year and sent out "enticing" messages to netizens who had commented on these articles, the report said. Feng had also joined various WeChat groups to introduce and recommend ways of suicide under the pretense that he would also commit suicide together with other members in the group chat.

Ma, who had depression, was among them. After they got in contact via WeChat, Feng introduced ways of committing suicide to Ma and lied by saying that he had attempted them before. After frequent chats, Ma affirmed his thoughts of committing suicide and went to a hotel as Feng recommended.

Prosecutors said that Feng initiated a video chat encouraging Ma to commit suicide, and that he later bragged in messages that he had "just sent one off" after Ma died.

Feng proactively recommended, taught ways of committing suicide, sent links of purchasing relevant tools and provided fabricated cases of suicide, which pushed Ma into taking his own life, the prosecutors said.

Although the two never met in person, Feng's acts were "basically equivalent" to face-to-face teaching and exerted "substantial help", which showed that he was actively chasing the result of Ma's death, prosecutors said. In addition, prosecutors concluded that there was "a causal relation "between Feng's acts and Ma's death, which fits the criteria of intentional homicide in the Criminal Law.

The Licheng District People's Procuratorate brought the charges to a local court in July last year, which ruled in favor of prosecutors and handed down the sentence in April. Feng appealed the verdict and the higher court denied the appeal and upheld the ruling.

Prosecutor's Daily said in a commentary piece on Wednesday that those who take advantage of other people's afflictions and instigate their death are despicable and should be punished.