On December 27, 2023, the official account of the magazine "Integrity Outlook" released a short video, which reads: "The Legislative Affairs Committee of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress called for a halt to the 'joint sitting' restriction on persons involved in crimes".
From the point of view of the rule of law, this would have been a wise move. What age is it? Still engaged in feudal society. What's funny is that in the comment area of the video, it's like this:
From the above chart, we can clearly see that many people not only do not think that the abolition of "joint sitting" is a good thing, but have quite a lot of opinions about canceling "joint sitting".
The arguments of these people, placed in the past few days when Zhu Ling, the victim of the "thallium poisoning" case, just passed away, are not only ridiculous, but also a little pitiful.
Why?
Let's first look at a case that happened to a female student at a university in Northeast China in 1997, which is a case with a completely different rhythm from Zhu Ling's thallium poisoning case.
On November 28, 1997, Zhang Cuixia, a girl from a junior college in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, suddenly found that the 600 yuan in her passbook had been fraudulently claimed at 9 a.m. that day. 600 yuan in that year was not a small amount, and Zhang Cuixia immediately called the police.
After receiving the report, a police officer named Dong Zhaohong from the Shenyang City Public Security Bureau was responsible for investigating the case. After rigorous logical reasoning, Dong Zhaohong thought that the person who took Zhang Cuixia's money should be the girl in the same dormitory with her.
In 1997, conditions were limited and the bank did not have surveillance footage. The police set the direction of solving the case on the signature left when withdrawing money. After handwriting identification, Zhang Cuixia's dormitory Li Xiuli and another female student were listed as suspects.
According to Li Xiuli's recollections later, Dong Zhaohong brought many blank withdrawal slips at that time and asked her and the girl to sign them as samples for handwriting identification. Two months later, Dong Zhaohong found Li Xiuli and told her that the results of the handwriting examination came out, and the results showed that she had fraudulently received Zhang Cuixia's 600 yuan.
Li Xiuli also wrote a confession on the same day, admitting that she had fraudulently received 600 yuan from Zhang Cuixia. But soon after, Li Xiuli retracted her confession. She found three classmates to write written proofs to prove that at 9 o'clock on the day of the crime, these classmates went to self-Xi with her, and they didn't even leave the door of the classroom, so they didn't have time to commit the crime at all.
After receiving the alibi provided by Li Xiuli, Dong Zhaohong promised to conduct a new handwriting evaluation.
This time, the speed of handwriting identification was very fast, and a few days later, Dong Zhaohong found Li Xiuli again and showed her a new handwriting identification result.
At the same time, the local police also made a handling opinion: Li Xiuli stole the passbook and fraudulently took other people's deposits, and should be punished by public security. But considering that Li Xiuli was a college student, the public security organs handed over the power of punishment to the school.
Stealing passbooks and fraudulently taking other people's deposits, how can the school spare such a bad thing?
On April 6, 1998, on the eve of Li Xiuli's graduation, the university where she studied was "ordered to drop out".
Li Xiuli originally had very good grades in Xi and served as a member of the Xi committee in the class, not to mention that her family was poor, and her mother picked up garbage for her to go to college, so she was dropped out of school in an unknown way, and both their mother and daughter could not accept it. Unconvinced, Li Xiuli was ordered to drop out of school and filed a lawsuit against the local police in May 1998.
After six months of trial, the court made a verdict, finding that the police's procedures were flawed, and ordered the police to carry out the procedures more strictly and make a new determination of the theft case.
Li Xiuxia was overjoyed after receiving this verdict, thinking that she had hope of clearing her wrongs, and ran to the public security organs every day, hoping that they would give a conclusion on redetermination as soon as possible.
She couldn't imagine what kind of doom awaited her. At the end of 1998, people from the public security organs drove to Li Xiuli and told her that the results of the re-identification had come down.
At that time, Li Xiuli was very happy and took her mother into the car without warning, and the mother and daughter naively thought that Li Xiuli's grievances could finally be washed away.
But Li Xiuli's mother and daughter never expected that the car did not take them to the public security bureau, but drove directly to the detention center.
Unbeknownst to her, Li Xiuli was savagely dragged out of the car from her mother, and despite the heart-rending cries of the mother and daughter, Li Xiuli was forcibly sent to the detention center. After she was imprisoned in the detention center, the public security officers showed her a copy of the re-education through labor decision, which read: "Li Xiuli committed theft activities and endangered public order, and in accordance with relevant regulations, it was decided to re-educate her through labor for one year." ”
In this way, Li Xiuli obviously won the lawsuit, not only did she not clear her grievances, but she was firmly re-educated through labor for a year.
But this year's re-education through labor still did not make Li Xiuli "honest". After being released from the labor camp, Li Xiuli took the Shenyang Municipal Re-education Through Labor Committee to court.
This time, Li Xiuli learned smartly. With her homework book and other materials, she left Shenyang and went straight to Beijing, where she asked Professor Xu Ligen, a well-known physical evidence expert and handwriting expert at the time, to ask him to verify whether her handwriting matched the deposit slip.
Professor Xu Ligen selected many samples from the materials brought by Li Xiuli and carefully compared them with the signatures on the deposit slips. As a result, whether it is from the Xi of writing or the way of carrying the pen, the name on the deposit slip is very different from Li Xiuli's handwriting.
After the comparison, Professor Xu Ligen, in the name of the Beijing Institute of Physical Evidence Technology, formally concluded that the words on the deposit slip were not written by Li Xiuli.
Li Xiuxia, who got the handwriting appraisal results, was greatly confident, thinking that she had overturned the case soon. No one expected that although the only evidence that had been found that Li Xiuli had fraudulently claimed savings had been overturned, she continued to defend her rights until September 2004, when the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court revoked her decision to revoke her re-education through labor, as well as all previous court judgments, and gave her 19,000 yuan in state compensation.
At the time of this case, Li Xiuli was a 21-year-old female college student in her prime, and by the time she was wronged, she was already 28 years old.
In the past 7 years, except for one year in labor reeducation, Li Xiuli could only scavenge with her mother in order to fight a lawsuit at any time. Li Xiuli won back her innocence, but the price was so painful.
There are certain similarities between this case and Zhu Ling's "thallium poisoning" case; not only did it happen in the same era, but it was also a case that occurred in the girls' dormitory.
Li Xiuli's case is actually more random than Zhu Ling's case; although Zhang Cuixia's roommate is the most suspicious, as long as they know where Zhang Cuixia's passbook is placed, it is not difficult for outsiders to claim it. After all, Zhang Cuixia is a student, and her life trajectory is not too simple, so she steals it out while she is in class, and just takes the money and puts it back.
But Zhu Ling's case is different. If it weren't for the Zhu Ling case, how many people would have known that thallium is poisonous? Even if they knew that thallium was poisonous, how many people would have been able to see it with their own eyes?
And most importantly, even if everyone knows that thallium is poisonous, how many people know how to poison it?
Moreover, Zhu Ling has been poisoned for a long time and many times, and his relationship with her is not close enough, and he is not familiar with thallium to a certain extent, so it is impossible to do it.
However, in the case, he was able to openly contact thallium, was also very familiar with the usage and dosage of thallium, and was in the same dormitory as Zhu Ling, and was not interrogated for 8 hours until 1997, two years after the incident. How many times worse is this than Li Xiuli being listed as a suspect on the day of the crime?
Li Xiuli was still found guilty of theft when someone proved that she did not commit the crime, and the evidence was only a wrong handwriting identification. The suspect in Zhu Ling's case, Sun, committed the crime under almost strict conditions, and in the end, there was still "a lack of key evidence".
Li Xiuli's case was very much in line with the times; she strived for "efficiency" in handling cases, and did not pay much attention to details. However, Zhu Ling's case is different; he strives to be "stable and convenient" in handling cases, for fear of "wronging" a person.
Put these two cases with the same era background together, what is it like, and who to talk to?
Of course, we must firmly believe that such a vastly different attitude towards handling cases must be that they have not been interfered with by external factors. It's just that judging from the results of these two cases, it is clear that people and people, after all, are still different.
Sometimes, the law is more "efficient" in the case of scavenging mothers and daughters, and more "humanitarian" in the case of people with more complex identities and backgrounds.
If we take it a step further and make this assumption: the crime is punishable by death, and the family is sitting. Is there any possibility that the case will be overturned? Is it possible that the suspects in Zhu Ling's case will be arrested?
From a realistic point of view, the results are probably obvious. Li Xiuli undoubtedly has no possibility of turning the tables, and her mother, who is scavenging for a living, may also have to suffer some troubles...... The suspect in Zhu Ling's case is not only more unlikely to be arrested, but the investigation is more difficult to carry out.
The law is only a tool for the enforcement of justice, and it cannot enforce justice by itself.
As a remnant of feudal society, "joint sitting" is itself one of the representatives of severe punishment and strict law.
The history of this thing is very long, as early as in "Shangshu Tang Oath", there is "You believe everything, I don't break my word." If you don't obey the oath, you will be killed, and you will be forgiven. "It means that you are against me to make Xia Ji, and I promise you that I will not forget the benefits. If you dare not listen to me, I will kill your family and I will never forgive.
To put it bluntly, this thing was invented, and it was specially designed to bully the bottom people.
Of course, what really played "lianzai" to a new height was the Qin State after the Shang Dynasty changed the law during the Warring States Period. Qin Xiaogong was anxious for quick success, hoping that the Qin State would soon become strong, and Shang Ying made extremely strict laws according to his favor, not only littering had to be punished, but a village had criminals, and the surrounding neighbors had to be sat down.
Through Shang Ying's changes, the Qin State was a lot stronger, but it also completely lost the hearts of the people.
A few years ago, there was a TV series that boasted that the Qin State was "united in heart", which had neither historical knowledge nor human nature.
After the fall of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period, there were Zhang Liang in Korea who assassinated Qin Shi Huang to avenge Korea; Qi had Tian Heng's brothers restored; Zhao had Yan and Zhao Youxia killed Guo to expel evil; the people of Chu had an oath that "although Chu has three households, if Qin dies, Chu will die"; even the weakest Yan State has Jing Ke who assassinated the King of Qin.
When the tyrannical Great Qin Empire collapsed, did anyone feel sad for it, and did some people raise the banner to avenge it? Liu Bang's "Three Chapters of the Law" directly took over the base areas that the Qin State had operated for hundreds of years, which was not too easy.
The strict punishment and strict law have been unpopular in history. Because the ancients have long understood that the law is only abstract logic, and the concrete implementation still depends on people, and human nature is the most unreliable thing in the world.
The public is selfless and upright, and that is because of what is advocated in literary and artistic works. In reality, it is more shameless and immoral bullying and flattery, praising the high and stepping on the low.
The reason why there is such an obvious gap between the Zhu Ling case and the Li Xiuli case, which are not far apart, is obviously the people, not the law.
Strict punishment and harsh laws are not only useful to ordinary people, but also often "go beyond the norm". But for those upper-class figures, they often inexplicably lose their effect.
Rebellion is a great crime, isn't it? According to the laws of various dynasties and generations, even if the nine clans are not punished, the whole family is still killed. But after Wu Sangui rebelled in the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi killed his son Wu Yingxiong, but left his daughter-in-law Ajige.
Why? It's not because Ajige is the daughter of Kangxi's grandfather, Huang Taiji, and in terms of generation, it is his own aunt.
The mainland is a humane society, and it has always attached great importance to blood ties and in-laws. Behind an upper-class person, a nest of people with backgrounds can often be pulled out. Such a thing as "joint sitting" is not only impossible to be useful to the people at the top, but will also encourage them to form an offensive and defensive alliance; instead of being "sat together," why not take the initiative to attack and advance and retreat together?
Zhu Ling's case dragged on for two years before the suspect Sun was interrogated for eight hours, and Li Xiuli was identified as a criminal suspect on the same day.
What did Sun, the suspect in Zhu Ling's case, say during his eight-hour interrogation?
And Li Xiuli confessed inexplicably when Dong Zhaohong showed her the handwriting identification results. It wasn't Li Xiuli who did it, so why did she confess? This is also an unsolved mystery.
Are the disparities between these two cases a problem that can be resolved by the severity of the law?
Since ancient times, the reason why the mainland has advocated benevolent rule is because of the practice of benevolent rule, the upper strata will certainly enjoy the benefits, but the lower strata can also drink some soup with it.
The law of strict punishment is not the same, it has almost no impact on the upper level, but it is often the case in front of the bottom.
A historical common sense: Almost none of the big greedy beetles in feudal history fell simply because of greed. The main reason for the downfall was either to stand on the wrong side and offend the superiors, or to do the wrong thing and lose the favor of the superiors.
Let them fall, it is the meaning of the top, and the suppression of corruption is just to find a reason.
Of course, with the founding of New China, the spiritual outlook of the entire society has taken on a new look, and all kinds of dirty and bad Xi of feudal society have long been completely eradicated. The historical common sense mentioned above has completely become a thing of the past.
I just hope that everyone can look at the problem rationally and think more about the reasons behind some phenomena. Don't be superstitious about strict punishment and strict laws, and be more concerned about practical issues.
If you can't even pull out the turnips, don't think about how much mud you can bring out. It doesn't really make much sense.