A woman was convicted of false accusation and framing for rape by her boyfriend: praise for the prosecutor who is faithful to the law丨Quick comment

Recently, a news that "a woman was falsely accused of rape by her boyfriend for breaking up and was convicted of false accusation and framing" has attracted attention on social media.

According to the "Xiaoxiang Morning News", citing the first-instance verdict of the Yunhe County People's Court in Zhejiang Province, the woman Lan Moumou and the victim Guo Moumou are boyfriend and girlfriend. Lan Moumou proposed to break up, but Guo Moumou disagreed. On October 27, 2023, in order to completely break up with Guo, Lan Moumou planned to falsely accuse Guo of rape by having sex with Guo and subjecting him to criminal prosecution. At about 18 o'clock on the same day, Lan went to a hotel room in Yunhe County, where Guo temporarily lived, and had sex with Guo. Subsequently, Lan Moumou called the police when Guo went out to call, saying that he was raped by Guo.

According to the verdict, the Yunhe County Investigation Organ investigated the case on the same day, filed a criminal case for investigation the next day, and arrested Guo on October 31 and took him into criminal custody. On November 7 of the same year, the police submitted Guo's suspected rape case to the procuratorate for approval of arrest. In the course of reviewing the case, the Yunhe County People's Procuratorate found that Lan Moumou might have criminal clues of false accusation and framing, so it made a decision not to approve the arrest on November 14 of the same year, and released Guo on the same day. On January 18, 2024, Guo's suspected rape case was withdrawn, and Guo was released on bail pending trial. In response to the case of Lan Moumou's false accusation and frame-up, the Yunhe County Court found that his crime was established and sentenced him to 7 months in prison with a one-year suspension.

Guo was lucky to meet a prosecutor who was loyal to the law and unwilling to relax the evidence in the criminal case. In the process of reviewing the case, the prosecutor found clues and judged that Guo might have been framed, so he did not approve the arrest and released Guo. And with the investigation of Lan's false accusation and framing, Guo's suspected rape case was withdrawn, and he was finally cleared.

It is worth noting that even though Lan Moumou was finally convicted of false accusation and framing, he was still sentenced to a suspended sentence and did not have to go to prison for reasons such as voluntary surrender, admission of guilt and acceptance of punishment. The cost of false accusation is much lower than the penalty for a man's crime. In the laws of various dynasties in ancient China, there were many provisions on false accusations, that is, if one falsely accuses others, the person who made the false accusation should be punished according to that crime. Only by increasing the punishment for the crime of false accusation can the impulse of false accusation be effectively curbed.

According to the Criminal Procedure Law, ordinary criminal cases are the responsibility of the public prosecutor, procuratorate and law. The public security organs are responsible for filing and investigating cases, the procuratorate examines the results of the public security organs' investigation of the case and decides whether to prosecute, and the court tries the case prosecuted by the procuratorate and decides whether the suspect is guilty or not and what punishment should be imposed. The law divides the whole process of handling criminal cases into three links, with the three divisions of labor responsible for the purpose of "cooperating with each other, restricting each other" and "ensuring the accurate and effective implementation of the law."

However, in judicial practice, the three public procuratorates, procuratorates, and courts often "cooperate more than enough, but not sufficiently restrict". According to an article published in the People's Court Daily in 2015, in judicial practice, the investigating organs and investigative activities dominate criminal proceedings, and about 98 percent of the cases found guilty and transferred for review and prosecution were prosecuted by the procuratorate, and almost 100 percent were convicted by the courts. The article argues that it is precisely because of the judicial system that excessive emphasis is placed on "mutual cooperation" and "mutual restraint" is neglected or even ignored, resulting in unjust and wrongful cases.

Fortunately, with the introduction of the task of "promoting the reform of the trial-centered litigation system", the court and procuratorate systems have begun to play a more restraining role in criminal procedures, and the proportion of procuratorates deciding not to prosecute and courts ruling not guilty has increased. In particular, in recent years, with the attention of public opinion, the procuratorate has either intervened in advance during the investigation stage, or has determined more and more legitimate defense cases during the examination and prosecution stage, and the courts have also ruled not guilty in some cases on the grounds of legitimate defense. All this reflects the mutual restraint of the public procuratorate and the law on the case.

However, in rape cases, the mutual restraint between the public prosecutor and the law is still clearly not adhered to. In all aspects of investigation, prosecution and sentencing, the standard of evidence in many cases has been lowered, and the judicial balance has clearly placed heavy emphasis on the confession of the "victim", and even the presumption of guilt on men. In many cases, a man is found guilty of rape on the basis of the confession of the "victim" alone, in the absence of objective evidence. In some cases, even when there is obvious evidence that the so-called "rape" is highly suspicious, the husband is still forcibly convicted of rape.

The standard of evidence in rape cases has been lowered, and the conviction of the man on the basis of the woman's confession alone is always suspected, which may not only create an unjust, false and wrongful conviction and make the parties to the case unjust, but also bring about more serious social consequences. The first is that the justice system can become a tool and accomplice for smearing, framing and even extortion. The defamation and framing case discovered by the Yunhe County Procuratorate in the above article is an example, if this case had not encountered a prosecutor who was loyal to the law, Guo would probably have been successfully framed by Lan.

There are also cases of extortion by means of false accusation of rape, and it has also been selected as a typical case of the procuratorate in 2023 released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate: "A gang of three people lured the man to have sex and extorted money, and was finally sentenced for the crime of extortion." In a recent criminal case announced by the Longgang Court in Zhejiang, a woman who works at an entertainment venue got into a male customer's BMW at three or four a.m., had sex in the car, and later reported to the police that she had been raped. After the male customer's relatives promised to give 100,000 yuan, the woman claimed that the two parties had sexual relations voluntarily and wanted to withdraw the case. In the end, this highly suspected case of extortion after prostitution was recognized by the judicial system as rape + perjury, and not only the man was convicted of rape, but the woman was also convicted of obstructing testimony.

Such a verdict also puts the man in the relationship at great risk of uncertainty: if the two parties have sexual relations, once the woman later reports to the police and insists that it is involuntary and raped, the man will be at a loss and will have a high chance of being identified as a rapist. If such a sword of Damocles hangs over a man's head all the time, a rational man may have no choice but not to have sex with a woman, or even be alone with a woman, so as not to get into trouble.

In fact, this situation is not limited to China. In Japan, in order to mitigate the legal risks of sexual acts, there is even a "sexual consent" mobile app, in which both parties confirm on the mobile app that they have sex voluntarily and the time, place, and manner of consent before having sex. While the app is likely to be a satire on the latest revisions to Japan's penal code regarding sexual offenses, the widespread attention and discussion it has received on social media is a clear indication that Japanese society is facing the same problem.

Just as the harsh definition of "justifiable defense" will make "righteousness and courage" extinct, if the relationship between the sexes in a society is shrouded in such an atmosphere, how can we talk about marriage and family? It is in this sense that we would like to praise Yunhe and the prosecutor of the county procuratorate. What he did was not only to save a man from injustice, but also to correct the dangerous tendencies of the whole society. However, it is almost impossible to correct similar incidents by relying on the power of one person. Only by forming a consensus can we hope to put things right.

Xin Xiangzhi

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin