Medical student loses appeal against death sentence in China for ‘April Fool’ poisoning
Lin Senhao, a former master’s medical student in Shanghai, lost his appeal today against a death sentence imposed for fatally poisoning his roommate, which he claimed had been only an April Fool's joke.
Lin Senhao, a former master’s student at Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University, lost his appeal today against a death sentence imposed for intentional homicide last February after poisoning his roommate.
His roommate died in April 2013 after swallowing a toxic chemical that Lin was studying, which he had placed inside the dormitory’s water cooler.
Lin, 28, from Guangdong, had told his trial he had added the poison as an "April Fool's joke".
Huang Yang, who was 28, from Sichuan province, fell ill with a fever and began vomiting after drinking the water containing N-nitrosodimethylamine, a odourless, colourless, water-soluble compound, which can cause serious liver damage.
He died in hospital of multiple organ failure two weeks later.
Huang’s father, Huang Guoqiang, told the Legal Evening News before the appeal verdict that he had been hoping for the sentence to be upheld. He had been prepared to appeal if the verdict had been overturned.
At his trial, Lin admitted that he killed Huang by giving him poison. But he argued that the poisoning had merely been an April Fool’s joke – with Huang drinking the poisoned water on April 1 – because he did not get on with his roommate, mainland media previously reported.
The two students started at medical school in 2010. Only a few days before Huang was poisoned, he had been accepted into the school’s postgraduate programme, while Lin was forced to halt his education owing to personal reasons.
At his appeal hearing early last month, Lin changed his plea and claimed that he had not meant mean to kill Huang. He said he had diluted the water after adding the poisoning, sina.com.cn reported.
His lawyer argued that Huang had died of liver failure because he was suffering at the time from the liver disease Hepatitis B, rather than as a result of the poisoning.
Lin also made an apology to the victim’s parents at the first trial, but this was rejected, China Youth Daily previously reported.
In May last year, a group of 177 students from Fudan University submitted a petition letter to the court, asking for a lighter punishment to be handed to Lin, whom they described as a “not a extremely brutal man”.
The case attracted widespread media interest, and was similar to a case 20 years earlier when a Tsinghua University female student, Zhu Ling, 19, was poisoned with the toxic chemical thallium.
Although Zhu’s friend and family claimed she had been poisoned by her roommate, the case remained unsolved.
Zhu survived, but was left paralysed and needs the constant care of her elderly parents.
