Today, Joseph Kahn offers a lengthy and harrowing description of China’s badly broken legal system. It’s not always easy reading.

For three days and three nights, the police wrenched Qin Yanhong’s arms high above his back, jammed his knees into a sharp metal frame, and kicked his gut whenever he fell asleep. The pain was so intense that he watched sweat pour off his face and form puddles on the floor.

On the fourth day, he broke down. “What color were her pants?” they demanded. “Black,” he gasped, and felt a whack on the back of his head. “Red,” he cried, and got another punch. “Blue,” he ventured. The beating stopped.

This is how Mr. Qin, a 35-year-old steel mill worker in Henan Province in central China, recalled groping in the darkness of a interrogation room to deduce the “correct” details of a rape and murder, end his torture and give the police the confession they required to close a nettlesome case.

On the strength of his coerced confession alone, prosecutors indicted Mr. Qin. A panel of judges then convicted him and sentenced him to death. He is alive today only because of a rare twist of fate that proved his innocence and forced the authorities to let him go, though not before a final push to have him executed anyway.

Justice in China is swift but not sure. Criminal investigations nearly always end in guilty pleas. Prosecutors almost never lose cases brought to trial. But recent disclosures of wrongful convictions like Mr. Qin’s have exposed deep flaws in a judicial system that often answers more to political leaders than the law.

This is a massive article that should be cut and pasted and stored by anyone curious about the progress of rule of law in China. As Kahn makes clear, the only thing that makes such an aberrant and dysfunctional system possible is China’s one-party dictatorship, which guarantees the odds are stacked against anyone targeted by the government.

There are a few (very few) bright spots in this truly terrifying article — some brave journalists are querstioning certain obviously fixed cases — but most of Kahn’s story is as dark as pitch. Don’t miss it. But don’t expect to walk away feeling cheerful.

Update: Multimedia accompaniment to this article here. It really brings the whole story to life.