Criminal Justice
Embattled Chinese defense lawyer Guo Guoting has arrived in Canada to participate in an international research conference, according to a Boxun report. Guo, recognized for his legal representation of activists, has defended journalists, Falun Gong practitioners, and other lawyers who have run afoul of Chinese authorities. On March 4, the Shanghai Justice Bureau upheld an earlier decision to suspend Guo’s law license for one year after he was accused of "adopting positions and making statements contrary to the law and the Constitution" and "defiling and slandering" the Communist Party and government (see related story here). Shortly afterward, Shanghai police placed Guo under house arrest (see related story here).
A Hebei provincial government investigation into the Nie Shubin wrongful execution case is at an impasse, and local court resistance has blocked Nie’s family's petitions for justice, reports the Beijing Morning News . Nie Shubin was executed in 1995 for a rape and murder that another man confessed to in January 2005, but local authorities have resisted attempts to exonerate Nie (see related stories here and here). According to the Beijing Morning News report, Hebei authorities have released no information on the official investigation into the case, and “all signs point to the fact” that the investigation has reached an impasse.
The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA), in a decision announced on May 5, overturned the convictions of eight Falun Gong practitioners for willful obstruction of police and assault. Hong Kong police arrested the practitioners in 2002 for obstructing a public thoroughfare in the course of a peaceful protest outside the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government. Several demonstrators resisted police efforts to arrest them for the obstruction. In 2002, a Hong Kong trial court convicted the demonstrators of obstructing a public place, willful obstruction of police, and (in the case of one demonstrator) assault. In 2003, a lower appeals court overturned the public obstruction convictions but upheld the willful obstruction and assault convictions.
Fewer than one percent of Chinese witnesses who give depositions before trial subsequently appear in court to testify, according to survey data cited by the Chinese journal Democracy and Law (Issue No. 4, 2005). The article notes that the failure of witnesses to appear at trial is one of the major problems facing the legal system, and that the problem is becoming more serious. It is a particular concern in criminal trials, in which the court may have only a written deposition to review. In such situations, defendants lose the benefit of their nominal right of cross-examination (click here for a related story).
Appeals courts reluctant to overturn criminal convictions often abuse a procedural provision that allows them to return cases for retrial, argues prominent Chinese criminal law scholar Chen Weidong in a Beijing News interview. He concludes that the practice leads to wrongful convictions. Chinese media have focused attention on the retrial issue in the wake of controversy over the wrongful conviction of She Xianglin (see related stories 1, 2, 3). In Mr.
On April 28, public security bureaus in several Hebei province locations released seven unregistered Catholic priests who had been detained the previous day, reports AsiaNews. Security officers detained the priests while they were attending a religious retreat with Bishop Jia Zhiguo. Local sources said that public security officials detained the priests because the retreat was held outside their home county.
AsiaNews also reports that Yao Liang, auxiliary bishop of Xiwanzi in Hebei province, was detained on March 30, released about April 20, and subsequently detained again. According to the news account, Chinese security authorities are subjecting Bishop Yao to a program of "re-education" to force him to register with the Catholic Patriotic Association, the government-approved Catholic organization.
Xinhua reported that on April 30 the Changsha Intermediate People's Court sentenced Shi Tao to 10 years imprisonment and two years deprivation of political rights for disclosing "state secrets." According to Xinhua, the state secrets in question consisted of information he learned at a meeting of the editorial board of the newspaper at which he worked.
A court in Nanping, Fujian province, imposed prison terms of six months to one year on the officers of a real estate company for failure to pay a construction contractor who then failed to pay workers, according to the Ministry of Justice Web site. The construction company could not pay the workers because the real estate company failed to deposit money into the construction project fund. While other employers may have faced criminal charges for withholding wages, this seems to be the first public report of a third party being held criminally responsible. In this case, the real estate company was also required to pay an extra 350,000 yuan ($42,288) into the construction fund.
Since late March, Chinese media have reported widely on the wrongful convictions of Nie Shubin and She Xianglin and problems in the criminal justice system that led to these cases (see related stories 1, 2, 3). In the wake of this discussion, the Legal Daily and People’s Daily have reported details on two additional wrongful convictions involving similar patterns of police abuse and convictions based on questionable evidence. Although neither case is new, the reports suggest an effort to demonstrate that the Nie and She cases are not aberrations.
On April 13, the Jingshan People’s Court in Hubei province formally declared She Xianglin innocent of murder charges after a retrial of the case. In 1994, the court convicted Mr. She of murdering his wife and sentenced him to death, a sentence that was later commuted to 15 years’ imprisonment (see related stories here and here). In late March, his wife suddenly returned to their Hubei village. Although Mr. She’s lawyer reported difficulties collecting evidence for the case and applied for a delay in the hearing, the resolution of the case, which has caused a national outcry, was never seriously in doubt.