On January 25, 1981 – Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, was sentenced to death by a special court in China. The charges stemmed primarily from Jiang’s role in the Cultural Revolution. Saying “I was Chairman Mao’s dog. I bit whomever he asked me to bite,” Qing unsuccessfully argued that she was merely acting at the direction of her late husband, who had died five years earlier.

In 1983, Jiang’s sentence was commuted to life in prison so that she would have “time to repent”. Her official trial documents have still not be released.