The Higher People's Court of east China's Jiangsu Province yesterday rejected the appeals of four Chinese murderers of a German family and retained the death penalty granted by a local court in the provincial capital, Nanjing.
The four accused, Zhong Weiyang, 20; Liu Guangyuan, 18; Ding Shanyang, 21; and Zhang Eryang, 20, were executed immediately after the issuance of the final ruling of the court.
The four were all jobless youngsters from Shuyang County, Jiangsu, 250 km north of the provincial capital.
At midnight on April 1, the four broke into the Nanjing residence of the Pfrang family, which includes Jurgen Hermann Pfrang, 50, his 40-year-old wife, Petra Pfrang, and their two children, daughter Sandra Melanie Pfrang, 15, and Thorsten Oliver Pfrang, 13.
All the four members of the Pfrang family were fatally stabbed by the criminals.
On July 13, following the convictions of murder and robbery, the Intermediate People's Court of Nanjing made the ruling to sentence the four to the death penalty, to deprive them of their political rights for life, and to confiscate all of their personal properties.
The higher court ruled that the four criminals used force while stealing and slaughtered the victims in a violent way. The scenario of the case is "particularly outrageous", has resulted in "unusually severe consequences", and they deserve severe punishment according to law, it says.
Jurgen Hermann Pfrang was deputy general manager of Yaxing BenzLtd, a Sino-German joint venture bus manufacturer based in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu.
(eastday.com 09/27/2000)
