After spending nearly half of his life behind bars, Jin Zhehong was cleared of premeditated murder due to insufficient evidence after a retrial in Northeast China's Jilin province on Friday.

The Provincial High People's Court overturned an original ruling which handed out Jin, 50, a suspended death sentence and pronounced him not guilty, as the evidence was not strong to prove his conviction.

On Sept 29, 1995, a woman's body was found near a railway track in the province's Yongji county. Several days later, Jin, then 27, was named the suspect and detained.

In November 1996, Jin was given a suspended death sentence for the intentional killing at an intermediate people's court in Jilin city, but the provincial high people's court sent the case back to the lower court for hearing again. The intermediate court, however, upheld the original ruling.

In 1998, the high people's court returned the case back again to the lower court, but the result remained the same until 2000. In that year, the high court maintained the original judgment.

On July 29, 2014, the high people's court announced it would review and reinvestigate the case after multiple appeals by Jin and his family.

On Oct 24, the court retried the case.

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