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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

Reforms to reduce pressure on judges

By Li Xinran | December 31, 2013, Tuesday | Print Edition

THE year 2013 has almost come to an end. People are extremely busy attending all kinds of year-end gatherings, but not many people may remember that December 35 years ago was a milestone for China’s reform and socialist legal system.

During December 18-22, 1978, the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC launched China’s reform and opening-up. Later, Deng Xiaoping pledged to “establish a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics.”

Much progress has been made. The judiciary has been strengthened in the past three decades. The number of judges is approaching 200,000, Xinhua news agency reported in July. There are also more than 230,000 lawyers nationwide, Xinhua added. Local courts handled 13 million cases last year, according to the Supreme People’s Court.

“How well are the courts handling their caseload, and can they credibly assume the added burdens of many new, varied, complex and sensitive cases? The answers to these questions are important to China’s stability,” says Jerome A. Cohen, co-director of New York University’s School of Law. Cohen has studied China and its legal system for many years and has written widely.

Cohen has frequently written that the problems that distort fair and independent judicial decision making are mainly massive corruption, political interference, and “local protectionism” that skews court judgments against outsiders.

“The guanxi system, or the corrosive network of personal connections that undermines the impartiality to which judges are sworn, is a pervasive and likely a permanent influence,” he has said.

Some lawyers, dependent on the favor of local officials for their livelihood, also are part of the problem.

Many scandals

On August 8, three judges and a discipline official with the Shanghai Higher People’s Court were removed from their posts by the Shanghai People’s Congress, the city’s legislature, after they were caught up in a prostitution scandal.

The sacked judges, Chen Xueming, Zhao Minghua, Wang Guojun, and the discipline official, Ni Zhengwen, were found soliciting prostitutes at the Hengshan Resort Hotel in Pudong New Area on the night of June 9.

The whistleblower, surnamed Ni, was reported to have lost a lawsuit in a case judged by Zhao. The man was forced to sell his apartment to pay his debts and suspected Zhao of manipulating the verdict because the plaintiff was the husband of Zhao’s cousin.

Shanghai judges are not alone.

Zhang Jun, presiding judge of the criminal tribunal in the Hubei Higher People’s Court, was revealed to have had an affair with a female lawyer for a long time, according to local authorities.

An investigation was launched after an Internet user uploaded video footage on December 8, and claimed Zhang had paid for sex in a hotel room in the provincial capital of Wuhan. The so-called sex worker was later identified as the female lawyer.

Zhang was not the first judge to sleep with a female lawyer.

Liu Qingfeng, former deputy president of Qingdao Intermediate People’s Court, was notorious for keeping multiple lawyer mistresses.

Corrupt judges do not bear all the blame.

Many of their colleagues were recruited from the military or police and never went to law school before starting their legal careers.

Passing the bar, the judicial exam, was virtually a mission impossible for them, but somehow they squeaked through and were allowed to rule on important cases.

Not surprisingly, some of their verdicts and sentences violated the principles of law, logic and common sense.

One defense lawyer, speaking of ridiculous rulings (and speaking on condition of anonymity), quoted one ruling as stating: “Neither the opinion of the prosecutor nor of the defense is accepted” — a violation of the principle that if there is no prosecution, there is no case.

Action needed

Another ruling stated: “The ruling is based on leniency for lack of evidence” — a violation of the principle that in doubtful cases there should be acquittal.

In addition, decisions in some complicated cases are made by an “adjudication committee” — consisted mainly of tribunal heads or a court’s administrative officers — not by the panel of judges who heard the evidence.

Late last year, this practice of verdict by adjudication committee was overturned in one court by the Foshan Intermediate People’s Court in Guangdong Province.

Judge Chen Zhiyun, head of that intermediate court in Foshan City, designated 35 of the court’s 194 judges to act as presiding judges with the right to carry out full and independent trials without interference from administrative superiors.

“Many wrongful convictions in the spotlight were not decided by the judges who heard the cases and knew the evidence,” Chen said. “The frontline judges usually had a clear view, but they were obliged to rule under pressure from administrative superiors or even local government officials.”

“I have fewer friends and more enemies since the reform was launched,” Chen said in earlier interviews. Perhaps Chen and his colleagues are much closer to being real, professional judges — lonely but impartial.

That’s the ideal, but some Chinese judges have a long way to go to achieve it.

The Foshan court reform suggests that legal reform nationwide is inevitable — and it is a matter of urgency — to further protect the deepening economic reform, to protect our people and many civil and business activities.

At the recent Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC last month, leaders pledged to ensure lawful, independent and impartial actions of its judicial authorities in order to guarantee “unified and accurate implementation of the law.”

After big promises, the country now appears to be serious about taking concrete action.

The legal reform specifically mentioned in the plenum’s resolution is that local courts and procuratorates must be distanced from the influence of the local governments that finance them and frequently influence the outcomes of cases.

 

Chinese Views


 

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