Im puzzled over this question to the judge, why the distinction was necessary. Tragically, and . Beckett planned to address the development at a news conference beginning at 3 p.m. CST, but that news conference was later postponed. Body found later in a water tank at the top of the hotel, the coroner stated that she died by drowning. . A US former doctoral student has been spared the death penalty for kidnapping and murdering a 26-year-old Chinese scholar, prompting widespread anger in China. Zhang's family said they believe the best thing to do at this point is allow federal, state, and local authorities to determine the feasibility of recovering her body. The memorial garden for Yingying Zhang outside Campbell Hall on the UIUC campus, near where she was last seen. Send it to The Daily Beasthere. According to his lawyers, Christensen placed her butchered body in three separate garbage bags, which he tossed in a dumpster outside his Champaign apartment before disposing of her personal items among trash receptacles around the Champaign-Urbana area. People from the FBI also testified that Zhangs DNA and her blood were found inside Brendts apartment, which unmistakeably linked him to the crime. Brendt claimed that he had dropped the girl off at a place that looked like a residential area, but could not pinpoint the exact location providing further cause for doubt. On June 15, 2017, Christensen was interviewed at the FBIs Champaign office. Investigators believe Zhang is dead . Torture during detention is commonplace in China. (MORE: Man found guilty of killing visiting Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang) Mike Christensen believes Zhang's killing could have been avoided if counselors took action then and there. According to this unsealed motion, he was placed on suicide watch and isolated from the general population for several months. He then took her to his apartment, where he raped, choked, and stabbed her in his bedroom; then dragged her into the bathroom, and beat her to death with a baseball bat before decapitating her. WTTW-TVs Matt Masterson also reported on Wednesday that Christensen has not and will not file an appeal to his convictions. During the trial, several people, including Terra Bullis, testified against Brendt. Yingying Zhang; Liangtao Li; Jiarui Guo; Yang Zhang; Xufeng Niu; Yang Wang ; Liang Hu et al. HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND. Brendt Allen Christensen, a physics graduate student, will appear in federal court on Monday, on charges of abducting 26-year-old Yingying Zhang in June. After a mistrial, Hernandez, 56, was convicted at a second trial in 2017. A woman who testified during the trial said Christensen showed her a silver sheriff's star when he asked her to get into his car. Race Asian. Brendt had previous mental health issues as an ABC news report mentioned that in 2017, he had admitted to having homicidal intent after conducting researches on serial killers. Western critics point to this as another example of the countrys abysmal human rights record, while Chinese officials and prominent academics claim that the legitimacy of capital punishment is ingrained in Chinese tradition and endorsed by its people. In 2013, Zhang graduated from Sun Yat-sen University at . In one recording, Christensen is accused of saying that Zhang fought him, and that he took her back to his apartment and held her there against her will last month, CNN reported. Articles Cited by Public access. Got a tip? One of them, a law student, noted that the presumption of innocence is a first principle and a literally foundational American value.. From as far as I could remember, my mothers fervid fear of my sudden vanishing filled the air around her. According to Bullis, who testified during Christensens trial, she felt very conflicted because she still cared for Christensen, but she also cared about what had happened to Zhang. I find a clue in the jury notes. Christensen stated that he brought Zhang back to his apartment, and otherwise held her in his apartment against her will, the affidavit alleges. Brendt Christensen, a former Ph.D. student at the same university, was convicted of Zhangs murder in 2019. A federal jury convicted Christensen in June. Her body never found, the family still hoping to someday bring her . A prosecutor told the court on July 5, 2017, that Christensen was recorded at a rally for Zhang by authorities and explained the characteristics of his ideal victim and, according to CNN, pointed out those in the crowd who matched them at a vigil he attended for the missing woman. The person helping authorities record Christensen was his then-girlfriend Terra Bullis. Video showed her at an Urbana, Illinois, bus stop getting into a black Saturn vehicle, and, after that, she vanished without a trace. At 2:38 p.m,, the apartment manager sent Zhang a text message and received no response. Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, said if the information Christensen gave prosecutors is true "it further confirms that he is a heartless and evil person.". In 2017 she went missing on her way to sign a lease, and after missing a bus. Classification Endangered Missing. The Chinese government closely followed Brendt Christensens trial, and the prosecution was determined to seek the death penalty. Eager to clear her boyfriends name, Bullis agreed to wear a wire for the FBI and accompany her boyfriend on a memorial walk for Zhang. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. Yingying was still missing. First published on August 7, 2019 / 6:12 PM. WGN-TV reported that he raped and beheaded Zhang, and implied he had 12 other victims, but this was never proven. Yingying's body has never been found. When Yingying Zhang went missing on June 9, 2017, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign was thrown into chaos as people searched frantically for the visiting Chinese scholar. Friday the I-Team reported information that government and defense attorneys both wanted kept quiet during the trial. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. On the 9 th of June 2017 a 26 year old Chinese scholar studying at the University of Illinois went missing. It is evident that any attempt to recover Yingyings remains would be complicated and expensive, would require government oversight and the cooperation of the landfill owners and would have no certainty of success, said Steve Beckett, attorney for the Zhang family, according to ABC. "We hope it will be a solemn place of reflection to all who visit, a place to remember the joy Yingying brought to her family and to everyone she met during her life," her father said. After nine days of trial and less than two hours of deliberations, the jury found Christensen guilty. Zhang was a visiting scholar at the university. A jury convicted Christensen of all charges in her death after 90 minutes of deliberation in June. At the end of the verdict form, the jury added a mitigating factor: Mr. She was observed speaking with the driver through the passenger window for about one minute, before entering the car. When the police searched his car, nothing stood out of the ordinary at first glance. Yet historically, the Middle Kingdom was not any more punitive than its Western counterparts, and recent surveys show a two-thirds support rate for the death penalty in China, roughly the same as those from the U.S. over the same time period. Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011, but Christensen was prosecuted under federal law. Christensen's attorneys told prosecutors that the day after he killed Zhang, Christensen placed her body in three garbage bags, and put the bags in the dumpster outside his apartment building, Beckett said. Would UIUC be a safer place if some of its resources for policing and surveillance went toward mental health services and supporting international students? The remains of Yingying Zhang, a Chinese scholar at University of Illinois who was murdered in 2017, could be in a landfill in central Illinois, according to multiple reports, though her body has . It creates and reinforces a binary: us versus them, good versus evil, the deserving versus the unwanted. Yingying Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, reads a statement in Chinese outside the federal courthouse in Peoria, Illinois, on Monday, June 24, 2019, moments after a 12-person jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her kidnapping and death. She knows how hard it is to raise a child. Sep 2017 - Dec 20225 years 4 months. While the countrys Criminal Procedure Law forbids extorting confessions or collecting evidence by illegal means, the regulations contain many loopholes and are poorly enforced. Born to a working-class family in the southern city of Nanping, Yingying received her masters degree from Peking University and worked as a research assistant at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. By this time, Zhangs family flew in from China and helped in the search. I am a research fellow at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), University of York. Growing up, she had a loving family; Her . Police said that, on June 9, 2017, Zhang went to UIs Turner Hall where she conducts research and then returned to her apartment for lunch. Associate Professor, Tsinghua University - Cited by 8,825 - Nanomaterials - Nanochemistry - Carbon nanotubes Having seen how much Yingyings family has suffered, Shi, the director, narrates in the film, I really hoped for the death penalty. We met for breakfast in Chicago and I asked about this statement. Reactions: ShHolmz, altojack, MajorHoople and 8 others. Audio and video recordings were played for a federal jury in the murder-kidnapping trial of Brendt Christensen on Friday --- including a recording of Christensen's chilling account of how he kidnapped and murdered Yingying Zhang, a promising young environmental engineer from China in June 2017. As I was preparing to write this essay, I spent an evening at my favorite restaurant, where I ate dinner and sipped two glasses of wine by the bar. Co-Authors. My mother who lives in China believes that criminal suspects should be tortured till they confess, my 2017 self wrote, that innocent until proven guilty is a frightening flaw of the U.S. justice system., The post concluded with a hashtag, #help., I read the words now and am startled by the casual cruelty. Later, in the other interview, authorities extracted an admission from Christensen that Zhang had been in his car, prompting the surveillance, according to the affidavit. However, soon, through the lenses of CCTVs, the police learned that the answer might be a lot closer to home than people thought. 43 Issue (2): 234-246. doi: 10.13284/j.cnki.rddl.003620. A new documentary, Finding Yingying, premiered at film festivals last year to critical acclaim and is now available on streaming platforms. For those opposed to the death penalty, is replacing the needle with a cage the only option? Brendt Christensen is a former Ph.D. student researcher from Champaign who was convicted by a federal jury of kidnapping in the death of Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old University of Illinois visiting scholar from China. The same jurors took less than 90 minutes to convict Christensen last month in the killing of Yingying Zhang. Christensen was accused of saying on tape: Shes gone. The family of murdered Chinese scholar Yingying Zhang has finally learned what happened to the body of their beloved daughter. Ten of the 12 jurors voted for the death penalty. Brendt Christensen, 30, kidnapped, tortured and killed U of I scholar Yingying Zhang in 2018. ABC reports that Bullis testified that she Christensen seemed excited and proud when he discussed killing Zhang. While a teenager in China, I had many fraught conversations with my mother about who should run errands after dark. Since then, they've likely been covered by at least 30 feet of landfill. Its sadly ironic that prisons are called penitentiaries or correctional facilities, while theyre designed for neither repentance nor rehabilitation but segregation and retribution. However, was Zhang's body ever found? June 16, 2021. The potential site was alleged to be a landfill in Vermilion County, along the Illinois-Indiana border. While capital punishment has little effect in deterring criminal behavior, in the era of mass incarceration, vocal support of the death penalty has become an effective tool for elected officials, including judges and prosecutors, to signal their tough stance on crime, hence appealing to the nations racist impulses and the publics thirst for vengeance. However, theres no doubt, sadly, that Zhang is dead. Yingyings life was precious. Around 2 pm, a CCTV camera spotted Zhang in a bus stand located directly opposite the universitys very own radio and television station. 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