Chinese national sentenced to 25 years for murder of Queens immigration lawyer

27-year-old Xiaoning Zhang (right) was sentenced to 25-years-to-life for the murder of Queens immigration lawyer Jim Li. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson

By Noah Powelson

Xiaoning Zhang, a Chinese national who was found guilty of murdering her former Queens-based immigration lawyer, was sentenced to 25-years-to-life in prison on Wednesday.

Those speaking at the 27-year-old’s sentencing hearing in Queens Criminal Court this week said that Zhang’s murder of Flushing attorney Jim Li shocked Queens’ legal and Chinese community in 2022, and that its effects have reverberated.

Li, who immigrated to the U.S. after being imprisoned by the Chinese government for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen square protests, often provided pro bono legal services, particularly to those looking to immigrate to the U.S. Friends and coworkers who gave statements during Zhang’s sentencing said Li’s murder hurt not just those close to him, but immigrants across the city who relied on the pro bono services lawyers like Li provided.

“This was a violent act by an educated, manipulative, and vindictive person,” Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Zawistowski, who led the prosecution, told Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder, who oversaw the approximately two week trial. “She took away not just a husband, a son, and a colleague, but the voice of the countless clients who relied on Jim for support.”

Li was a prominent Chinese pro-democracy advocate in Flushing, and earned a reputation working on clients’ asylum applications pro bono. In 2022, Zhang enlisted Li’s help for her own asylum application, claiming she was raped by Beijing police officers before coming to the U.S. on a student visa.

Li worked for Zhang for several months, until she requested Li remove a picture of herself at an anti-China protest from the internet, which she claimed had led to harassment. When Li said that he wouldn’t be able to scrub the picture, a fight broke out in which witnesses say Zhang admitted to lying about her sexual assault and her student visa application.

Li said in response that he would no longer work on her case. That’s when Zhang attempted to strangle Li, witnesses said. Police were called but no arrest was made. Li could be heard on body cam footage saying he didn’t want an arrest to ruin Zhang’s asylum application.

Three days later, on March 14, 2022, Zhang returned to Li’s office with two knives and stabbed him four times when they were alone. He died in the hospital later that day.

Friends and family of Li’s crowded the courtroom on Wednesday, several of whom gave victim impact statements expressing the pain Li’s murder caused. One such individual was a key witness for the prosecution’s case, Chris Li, who had no relation to the victim.

Chris Li was working in the legal office alongside Li when the murder took place, and restrained Zhang until police arrived. Speaking to Holder on Wednesday, Chris Li spoke of the pain Li’s murder inflicted on his community and his own psyche.

“This act of selfish violence has spread fear across the city.,” Chris Li told the judge. “The images of that day are burned in my memory.

Chris Li said the crime was committed not just against Li and his loved ones, but against the larger immigrant Chinese community, which is made up of a number of people in need of pro bono legal representation.

“The countless clients who relied on Jim for their cases remain in limbo,” Chris Li said.

Chris Li said his friend’s murder has had a ripple effect in the legal community. He said lawyers he knows have expressed fear and hesitation taking on pro bono clients because of the murder, fearing acts of charity might be met with violence.

Chris Li, friend and coworker of the late Jim Li, was a key witness in the trial against Ziaoning Zhang. He said Jim Li’s death has had adverse effects on the immigration legal community. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson

Li asked Holder to give Zhang the maximum sentence for the killing.

Zhang’s attorney, Scott Celestin, asked the judge for leniency and consideration for someone who he claims suffers from severe mental illness. Repeatedly using the phrase, “schizophrenic, unmedicated, untreated,” Zhang’s attorney called the treatment of Zhang a “failure of the system.”

Throughout her trial, Zhang sat at the defense table quiet and seemingly calm. Though she did have an early angry outburst at her attorney during the opening remarks, and was combative with the prosecutor and judge during her testimony, for the most part, she remained composed while prosecutors crafted the narrative of the vindictive murderer.

When she spoke to the judge on Wednesday, that composure crumbled.

“I’m not the person they say I am,” Zhang said, removing her face mask for the first time throughout the trial, making the tears on her face plainly visible. “For the past three years I have been thinking of him [Jim Li].”

Speaking through a interpreter, Zhang said she was not the manipulative murderer the prosecution said she was. She said the verdict was unfair and claimed the prosecutors lied around the circumstances of the case. She denied ever choking Li, and claimed the autopsy report and her psychiatric evaluations had discrepancies.

While the facts of the murder itself were laid out during the trial through multiple eyewitnesses, police body camera footage and DNA evidence, the great unknown of the case was Zhang’s motive. Zhang refused to answer any questions by either the prosecutor or her own attorney for why she stabbed Li during the trial.

The question remained at her sentencing.

“Why is Mr. Li dead? I still have no idea why,” Holder said on Wednesday. “I don’t know if we ever will.”

While Zhang claimed she was harassed for the photos of herself attending pro-democracy protests, Li had no involvement in the photo or the harassment, prosecutors said.

She repeatedly denied that she killed Li as a result of her schizophrenia, like her attorney claimed, but offered no other explanation for why she stabbed Li, which she admitted to on the stand.

Zhang’s attorneys argued her untreated mental illness created paranoid delusions of persecution that resulted in a “profound loss of self-control,” but the argument was rejected by the prosecution, the jury, the defendant and Holder.

“One could easily reach the conclusion you came [to this country] to kill Mr. Li,” Holder told the defendant, noting Zhang’s previous criticism of Li’s pro-democracy activism. “This killing seemed efficient.”

Calling Zhang intelligent and extremely dangerous, Holder said that Zhang would get her original wish to stay in the country, but likely not in the way she imagined. Holder gave her the maximum sentence murder of Li, as well as the maximum sentence for other lesser charges, including illegal possession of a weapon and criminal obstruction of breathing.

On her way out of the courtroom, Zhang vowed to appeal her conviction and sentencing.