They Buried Her Under a Flowerbed for 28 Years. Both Got Death. Only One Got Immediate Execution.

The Luzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan sentenced Chen Moufen and Yang Mougen to death. Chen will be executed. Yang received a two-year reprieve. Both were convicted of intentional homicide. The court called both crimes extremely serious. It also found that Yang carried out the killing, played an active role, and could not be treated as an accessory. Yang’s sentence remains a death sentence. A reprieve changes when the sentence is carried out, not whether the defendant was convicted.

The legal dispute is why Chen had to die immediately and Yang did not.

Article 48 asks two questions

Article 48(1) of the Criminal Law separates the death penalty into two decisions. First, may the court impose death? That requires a crime of extreme seriousness. Second, must the court carry out the death penalty immediately? If immediate execution is not necessary, the court may impose death with a two-year reprieve.

The first question looks at the crime. The second looks at the defendant in front of the court. It asks whether immediate execution is necessary. A case can pass the first threshold and still leave room on the second. The court then examines the defendant’s role, motive, premeditation, conduct after the killing, conduct during flight, attitude after arrest, and whether the victim’s family has forgiven him.

The Luzhou judgment follows that structure. It did not rank Yang’s killing as less serious. It found that immediate execution was not necessary for him.

Why Chen received immediate execution

The judgment lists Chen’s conduct. She proposed the killing to escape a debt. She used repayment as a pretext to lure the victim to the planned location. She created the conditions for Yang to kill. The court called her role key to starting and advancing the crime. Although it did not divide the defendants into principal and accessory, it placed her in a relatively dominant position and said she played a greater role than Yang.

The premeditation was concrete. A shovel was bought for burying the body, the victim was lured with a repayment pretext, and the location was chosen in advance. Those facts rule out a killing in a sudden quarrel or a killing without planning. Chen’s motive was to avoid a 40,000-yuan debt owed to a woman who had lent her money. The victim’s jewelry was taken. The body was carried to a rooftop flowerbed on the ninth floor of the mall and buried there. It stayed there for twenty-eight years.

The burial is not a separate charge. In an intentional homicide sentence, it extends the harm. The victim’s son, Huang, could not bury his mother or say goodbye for twenty-eight years. The killing was an act. The concealment turned that act into a condition the family lived with.

Chen’s conduct after the killing added more weight. She fled. She had cosmetic surgery. She forged identity documents, used false identity documents, and crossed the national border illegally. The court convicted her of those offenses along with intentional homicide and imposed combined punishment. Under Article 69, a death sentence absorbs other principal punishments, so the forgery and border-crossing convictions do not add a prison term after the death sentence. They still matter in sentencing. They show a sustained effort to evade investigation for more than two decades.

Her attitude after arrest closed the space for a confession-based reduction. The court found that she did not truthfully confess the main facts. She admitted the killing but shifted primary responsibility to Yang and disputed details. A defendant who admits an act but denies responsibility for the main facts does not receive the benefit of a truthful confession under Article 67(3). Shifting blame and contesting details remove that basis or reduce it sharply.

The court also considered compensation. Chen had paid. The court found that compensation was not enough to justify a lighter sentence. The victim’s family had received full payment from the defendants’ relatives, and the civil claims were no longer supported. Compensation is a discretionary mitigating factor. It does not erase the gravity of the crime. Where the motive is base, the nature vile, the consequences severe, and the family has not forgiven the defendant, compensation carries limited weight. The victim’s son said the family would not discuss money and wanted only the death penalty. No letter of forgiveness was issued.

Those factors led the court to find that immediate execution was necessary for Chen.

Why Yang received a reprieve

Yang’s position differs, but not because the court treated his killing as ordinary. The court found that he carried out the killing, played an active role, and should not be divided from Chen as an accessory. It sentenced him to death. The reprieve is a finding about immediate execution, not a finding that the killing was minor.

The court based the reprieve on Yang’s truthful account after arrest and his remorse. That basis needs precision. Yang did not surrender. Police arrested him twenty-eight years after the crime. His cooperation falls under a truthful account after arrest, not surrender. Article 67(3) allows a lighter sentence for a truthful account, but that reduction is smaller than the reduction for surrender.

The court also did not find the same post-crime conduct that Chen had. Chen forged identity documents, used false documents, and crossed the border illegally while in flight. Yang’s circumstances did not include that continuing criminal conduct against the justice system. That difference affects the dangerousness assessment and the need for immediate execution.

Public information says Yang had served a prison sentence. That fact needs a separate legal check. Under Article 65, a general recidivist must have committed both offenses intentionally, must have received a fixed-term imprisonment or heavier sentence for the first offense, must face a fixed-term imprisonment or heavier sentence for the second offense, and must have committed the second offense within five years after completing or being pardoned for the first. The crime occurred in 1997. Whether Yang is a recidivist depends on the exact date his prior sentence ended. If the five-year condition is met, Yang would have a statutory aggravating factor alongside the basis for a lighter sentence. The court’s outcome shows that it weighed both and still found a reprieve available. A confession alone did not compel that result. The whole structure of Yang’s circumstances did.

The distinction is not “the planner dies and the killer lives.” Both received death sentences. Chen’s aggravating factors, including initiation, the lure, premeditation, burial, long concealment, false identity, border crossing, and refusal to truthfully confess the main facts, left no room for a finding that immediate execution was unnecessary. Yang’s truthful account and remorse, combined with the absence of the same continuing post-crime criminal conduct, left such room.

The objection: comparison should not create leniency

The objection is fair. If two defendants are both extremely serious, and one is slightly less culpable, why should that comparison produce a reprieve? Every comparison creates a ranking. A ranking is not a legal basis for leniency.

Comparison in a joint crime has a limited function. When a joint crime causes one death, sentencing policy allows courts to distinguish among co-principals and to impose immediate execution only on the co-principal with the greatest culpability. That distinction is not a prize for second place. It is a restraint on the death penalty. Because the death has already happened and cannot be undone, the finding that immediate execution is necessary should be reserved for the defendant whose aggravating factors leave no mitigating space.

Comparison explains the structure of the joint crime. It does not by itself produce leniency. Leniency needs a legal basis in the defendant’s own circumstances: a truthful account, surrender, compensation with forgiveness, remorse, or another statutory or discretionary factor. Yang’s reprieve rests on his own truthful account and remorse, not on his rank below Chen. If Yang had also forged documents and crossed the border illegally during flight, his truthful account might not have carried the same weight. If Chen had truthfully confessed the main facts, her outcome might have differed. Each sentence depends on each defendant’s own circumstances.

The court did not say Yang’s killing was less serious. It said immediate execution was not necessary. That finding needs support in Yang’s own circumstances.

Compensation, forgiveness, and the limits of payment

The case also shows how compensation works in death sentencing. The defendants’ relatives paid the civil claims in full. The court no longer supported the victim family’s civil claims. Chen still received immediate execution.

Compensation is a discretionary mitigating factor. In extremely serious intentional homicide cases, its weight is limited. Supreme People’s Court guidance has said that where the circumstances are especially vile and the consequences especially serious, even a statutory mitigating factor such as surrender may not prevent a death sentence if the victim’s family has not forgiven the defendant and the crime remains extremely serious. The absence of forgiveness does not automatically require death, but it reduces the mitigating weight of compensation.

The victim’s son refused to discuss compensation and sought only the death penalty. No forgiveness was issued. The court found that Chen’s compensation was insufficient to reduce punishment. The payment did not buy a reprieve.

The flowerbed and the twenty-eight years

The sentencing weight sits in concrete facts. A woman lent 40,000 yuan to a person she had known only a short time. She was lured to a fourth-floor shop under the pretext of repayment. She was killed by hand. Her jewelry was taken. Her body was carried to a rooftop flowerbed on the ninth floor and buried. The mall was later renovated. In June 2025, workers repairing the flowerbed found the bones. The case reopened. Chen had lived under a false identity, with a changed face and forged documents. Police arrested Yang twenty-eight years after the killing.

The victim’s son described his mother as someone who avoided quarrels and lent a large sum to help a person she had not known long. The kindness became the entry point for the crime. The debt became the motive. The flowerbed became the hiding place.

The judgment treats those facts as sentencing structure, not background. Chen proposed the killing to escape the debt. She lured the victim. She created the conditions. She buried the body. She concealed it. She forged documents. She crossed the border. She refused to truthfully confess the main facts. Yang carried out the killing. He later gave a truthful account and expressed remorse. He did not engage in the same continuing post-crime criminal conduct.

What the reprieve means

A death sentence with a two-year reprieve is not an acquittal. It is a death sentence whose execution is suspended for two years. If the defendant commits a new intentional crime during the reprieve and the crime is serious, the reprieve may be revoked and execution carried out. If the defendant does not commit such a crime, the sentence may be commuted to life imprisonment or a fixed-term imprisonment under Article 50. The reprieve is a narrow exception inside the death penalty system. It asks whether immediate execution is necessary.

The Luzhou judgment does not treat Yang’s killing as less serious. It finds that the state has not established that his execution must be immediate. Chen’s compensation did not erase her crime; the court found it insufficient to reduce punishment. Comparison did not automatically save the second-ranked defendant. Yang’s own truthful account and remorse, set against the absence of the same continuing post-crime criminal conduct, left room for a reprieve.

That room depends on each defendant’s own circumstances, not on rank in a comparison.