In 2014, Nguyen Thi Hue, a 42-year-old woman from Vietnam, was sentenced to death for selling an illegal drug. But in 2016, her sentence was reduced to life imprisonment.
In today’s article, we will take a look at how she cleverly found a way to save herself from the death penalty. Vietnam is a nice place to visit because you can visit so many places at an affordable price.
But you have to be careful because Vietnam is a hotspot when it comes to illegal drugs coming from the Golden Triangle, an intersection of three countries that includes Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar.
The Golden Triangle is a major producer of illegal drugs in the world; second after the Golden Crescent, another group of countries that includes Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan.
As a result, Vietnam has one of the strictest penalties in the world, including the death penalty, when it comes to possession and selling of illegal drugs. But it looks like that these measures do not deter people as seen in the continued increase of illegal drugs in the country.
A few months ago, for example, a court in the northern province of Cao Bang sentenced four people to the death penalty for selling heroin. In the past years, Vietnam had several criminal reforms, including reducing crimes that were previously punishable by the death penalty.
Nevertheless, every year several criminals are killed through lethal injection. For example, between August 2013 and July 2016, 429 persons were killed through lethal injection.
The latest Penal Code was amended in 2015 and became effective in January 2018, removing the death penalty for 8 crimes. It also said that people under 18 or over 75 years old, pregnant women, and mothers with children who are under three years old, are exempted from the death penalty regardless of their crime.
According to the Thanh Nien report, Nguyen Thi Hue was arrested in 2021 for drug smuggling and was given a death sentence in 2014. She appealed several times in hope of reducing her sentence, but the court rejected her appeals.
While waiting for her execution, she was detained at Quang Ninh Prison. It was here that she got acquainted with a 27-year-old male prisoner named Nguyen Tuan Hung.
At that time, Nguyen Tuan Hung was serving a 30-month sentence for stealing and was working in the kitchen while in prison. Without any hesitation, she asked him to help her get pregnant because she knew that this is the only way that her sentence can be reduced according to the Vietnam penal code.
For a payment of 50 million Dong or $2,300, Nguyen Tuan Hung agreed to help. The problem was how they can accomplish this agreement since they were housed in separate buildings, and the guards are very strict.
According to a report, Nguyen Tuan Hung collected his sperm into a zip lock, and together with a syringe that he included, placed it at a spot that Nguyen Thi Hue can collect.
She then went into the bathroom and using a syringe, injected herself with Nguyen Tuan Hung’s sperm. The method worked. In February 2016, Nguyen Thi Hue declared her pregnancy.
A test confirmed that she was 4 to 5 months pregnant. The DNA test also confirmed that Nguyen Tuan Hung was the father. After several months, on May 14, 2016, Nguyen Thi Hue delivered a healthy baby boy.
Accordingly, her sentence was reduced from the death penalty to life imprisonment. Nguyen Tuan Hung was fined between 30 to 40 million Dong for his participation in the case.
The police also investigated the prison superintendent and four prison guards were suspended for their negligence. This incident is not new. For example, in 2007, two prison guards in the northern province of Hoa Binh were sentenced to up to five years in prison for abuse of power and allowing a female inmate gets pregnant by a male inmate.
And this is the story of Nguyen Thi Hue, a drug smuggler who escaped the death penalty through pregnancy, using a purchased sperm and a syringe.