China reduces ATM sentence

A security guard who received a life sentence on bank robbery charges for withdrawing more than $24,000 from a defective ATM saw his sentence reduced Monday to five years. The retrial followed widespread outrage on the Internet, which prompted the Chinese court to reconsider its decision.

The Guangdong Intermediate People’s Court in southern China also ruled Monday that Xu Ting, who has already served 10 months, must pay a $2,850 fine and the full amount amassed during his 171 visits to the defective machine in April 2006.

“My son must be happy to have the pressure lifted from his shoulders,” said Xu Cailing, Xu’s father, after the decision was announced. “But for myself, I think it is still unjust and can’t accept this decision. There shouldn’t be any punishment.”

Although Xu Ting said in court that he was happy with the new sentence, his family is considering an appeal. His lawyer said it was not clear whether the younger Xu was pressured by his jailers to stop challenging the system.

It’s doubtful the impoverished migrant will be able to pay the fine and compensation to the bank, his father said. This could require the young man to pay part of his wages to the court for life even though, by some accounts, the bank losses were covered by the ATM manufacturer.

After pocketing the $24,500 windfall, Xu, 25, spent a year on the lam. Some of the money was stolen by a thief; Xu lost most of the rest in a failed bid to start a company, then gambled the remainder on thousands of lottery tickets that didn’t pay off. He then got a job, at which point a routine police ID check led to his arrest.

Reducing sentences is unusual in a system that rarely admits error. In its revised sentence, the court apportioned more blame to the bank, less to Xu and said the harm to society was not so substantial, said Yang Zhenping, Xu’s lawyer.

Though legal experts welcomed Monday’s revision, they said it underscored the flawed nature of China’s legal system given that it takes mass outrage before an appeal is considered for most people.

“In China, there are thousands of cases involving flawed sentences,” said Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “There’s a tendency to throw the book at ordinary people, while officials get off with relatively lenient sentences.”

Lawyers said the fact that the government decided to hear an appeal was a positive sign, although some expressed concern that the law could bend so quickly to popular pressure, adding that China still has a long way to go before the powerful and the poor are treated equally under the law.

“It would be great if it happened,” Hu said. “But I don’t see much chance of that any time soon.”

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mark.magnier@latimes.com

Gao Wenhuan in The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.