The higher people's court of north China's Hebei Province has upheld the death sentence of a multiple murder-rapist who claimed to have killed a victim whose murder case led to the execution of another man 18 years ago.

The Hebei Provincial Higher People's Court handed down the second-trial verdict to Wang Shujin on Friday, convicting him of raping three women and murdering two of them between 1994 and 1995.

The court overruled his claim that he raped and killed another woman in 1994 in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei, a crime for which 21-year-old Nie Shubin was executed in 1995.

Wang was sentenced to death in March 2007, but he appealed for mercy, claiming that his confession over the Shijiazhuang case should have earned him a less severe penalty.

Wang admitted the charges during court hearings, but claimed that Nie was innocent, and he himself was the person who raped and murdered the woman in a cornfield in the outskirts of Shijiazhuang in 1994.

After Wang was apprehended by police in 2005 over the three separate rape and murder charges, he confessed to having raped and murdered the woman in Shijiazhuang.

His claims triggered extensive public attention following several wrongful conviction cases in recent years. Some believed that Nie could be another victim of wrongful conviction.

On Friday, Nie's mother, 68-year-old Zhang Huanzhi, was with an audience of 200 people including journalists and lawyers attending the public sentencing of Wang.

She demanded that her son's case be reopened, and called for all files on the case to be disclosed.

"There was not enough evidence to prove that he committed the crime," said Zhang.

The court overruled Wang's appeal for mercy, citing the reason that his account of the 1994 rape-murder case including the means by which the woman was killed, the time of the crime, and his description of the victim's dress and height did not match evidence presented by the procuratorate.

Wang told the court that he strangled the woman until she passed into a coma, raped her, and stomped on her chest until she died. He claimed to have heard the sound of her bones fracturing.

But the victim's autopsy report showed no bone fractures. The woman died from strangling, according to the court.

Wang claimed that he committed the crime between 1 and 2 p.m. However, one of the victim's colleagues testified to having been with the woman until 4:30 p.m. on the day in question. Another colleague testified that the victim took a shower at a public shower house after work at 5:00 p.m.

Wang described the victim as "about his height," 1.72 meters tall. But the autopsy report showed the woman's height was 1.52 meters.

The procuratorate said some of the details in Wang's confession matched those from the crime scene investigation. However, given that the crime scene was only about 100 meters from a construction site where Wang had worked, he was familiar with the location and the case, as evidence showed that Wang and his colleagues had been asked by police about the case.

According to a source with the provincial political and legal affairs department, the procuratorate allowed the defendant's lawyer to refer to some of the files on Nie's case during the proceeding of Wang's case, but not all.

The sentencing on Wang will be submitted to the Supreme People's Court for approval.