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Death of judge inspires need for legal reform
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FOR the past week, Shanghai has mourned the passing of Judge Zou Bihua, deputy head of the Shanghai High People’s Court.
The judge died of a heart attack on December 10, aged only 47. His sudden death, probably caused by overwork, has left many in agony. Attendance at his memorial service was massive. A civil servant friend told me that the entire staff at Changning District People’s Court, Zou’s former employer, were bused in to the funeral parlor to pay homage, all tearful and grief-stricken.
TV footage showed a gray-haired man speaking between sobs that “Zou had been kind to all,” be they “a concierge, a fellow judge or ordinary people.”
The deceased judge will be remembered for his easy-going personality and demeanor, devoid of the usual patronizing airs of some officials today.
To be sure, a bigger reason for the respect he commanded is his commitment to the rule of law, and in particular, to the judicial reform.
He Fan, a judge sitting on the national Supreme People’s Court and a personal friend of Zou, wrote a piece in his honor, in which He recalled a conversation between them about the difficulty of pursuing judicial reform.
“How can reform not take on vested interests and provoke controversy? ‘Carrying the black pot’ is the penance reformers must endure,” Zou is quoted as saying.
“Carrying the black pot” is a slang expression that means to hold the bag or be made a scapegoat for something for which one is not to blame. This is a personal motto of the respectable judge, but it can be projected onto others who ply the same trade, widely expected to be fair, independent and free from interference in doing their job.
Long overdue justice
Nothing illustrates the need for such spirit better than the case of the hapless Huugjilt. The Inner Mongolian teenager was wrongly convicted and executed as a rapist-murderer 18 years ago, and declared innocent only recently.
Although a few observers tend to console themselves by citing the cliched legal maxim that “Justice is better late than never,” justice in this case is simply long, long overdue.
The parents of Huugjilt said in an interview they won’t demand astronomical compensation. But no compensation is sufficient for bereavement. The only solace to be derived from this outrageous case is that action would be taken against some of the police officers who allegedly extracted false confessions through torture, and even fabricated evidence.
It has been confirmed that police officer Feng Zhiming, the chief culprit behind the false indictment, had been taken away for investigation after a month-long absence from public view.
But it still pains us to think that a criminally wrongful conviction should have taken 18 years to overrule, while Huugjilt was dispatched only 62 days after his arrest, with no legal recourse.
Attempts to have his name cleared met with repeated failures even after the alleged true murderer emerged. Those who tortured the teenager, dragged him before a kangaroo court, and sat in his absurd trial were later promoted to higher office. There were apparently too many jobs to protect, too many faces to save.
We perhaps need to thank the recent national conference on judicial work, held in November, for creating conditions for the case — and many other summary trials prosecuted on similarly dubious grounds — to be retried.
In retrospect, however, the question remains: Why has not a single police officer, prosecutor or judge come forward, railed against gross injustice and saved Huugjilt from death row? Did their conscience not gnaw at them?
The Xinhua Daily Telegraph, a Xinhua-affiliated newspaper, published an editorial on December 18, headlined, rather intriguingly, “What if there was a change of judge in the Huugjilt trial?”
The author, Yang Shaogong, argued that “while there is no ‘if’ in history, there is this real possibility that had more responsible police officers, suspicious prosecutors and independent judges been involved, the tragic chain of events could have been broken.”
The author went on to say, “Individuals are unable to change the legal climate, but as things stand, wrongful convictions can no doubt be reduced if those in charge of practicing law insists on being ‘good men.’”
‘Good men’ to the job
This “good men” rhetoric might be antithetical to the government’s professed aim of establishing “rule of law,” rather than “rule by law.” But it ought to be noted that at the end of the day, legal principles are implemented by individuals.
In this sense, the realization of the rule of law comes down to the very question of who should be put in charge of delivering justice in its name. This calls for a steady trickle of decent judges, prosecutors, and even police officers who can resist interference, let law run its course and are willing to “carry the black pot,” to borrow Judge Zou’s motto.
It is due exactly to this hope that his death has attracted such publicity, and been mourned so deeply.
At the moment, nearly everyone in the legal trade is busy discussing Zou’s legacy, but the memory of the dead judge will probably be better honored by answering this question: Are his fellow judges, supposedly heirs to his unfinished business, up to the task?
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