By Wang Lin (王琳), an associate professor at Hainan University's Law School
Issue 628, July 15, 2013
Nation, page 16
Translated by Laura Lin
Original article: [Chinese]

China's Supreme Court Chief Justice Zhou Qiang (周强) recently declared that any miscarriage of justice is an affront to social fairness.

The Chief Justice also announced a preliminary plan for promoting independent and impartial trials, respecting and protecting the rights of lawyers, and establishing a sound mechanism for preventing and correcting wrongful convictions.

A few days later, Zhu Xiaoqing (朱孝清), deputy procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (最高检察院副检察长), published an article (Chinese original here) in Procuratorate Daily (检察日报) dealing with the same topic — avoiding botched judicial cases.

The recent exposure of cases of wrongful convictions have aroused a lot of public attention.

The firm declarations of these two prominent Chinese legal officials seem to be a direct response to such attention and a public expression that impartiality is at the heart of justice. Without it, judicial credibility and authority simply cease to exist.

Regrettably, news about wrongful convictions has emerged not because the judicial system realized the errors of its ways. In one case, the real murderer was discovered after being arrested for another crime; and in another the supposed victim came back from the dead.

"By reflecting on the past, what is not found now doesn't necessarily mean that objectively there was, or there won't be, the occurrence of miscarriages of justice," Zhu Xiaoqing said.

Taking the initiative to correct such errors is the obligation and responsibility of the judiciary, which cannot simply stick to the passive virtues of ordinary judicial cases.
 
Though equity and fairness are the ideal, it's impossible to eliminate injustice entirely, even in the most sophisticated country. Legal malpractice is bad enough, but even more horrifying is the failure to right the wrong. Without an efficient mechanism for correcting judicial errors — and an accompanying respect for human rights that must support it — China's justice system will be forever flawed.  

The vast majority of flawed cases occur at the local level, so that's where the focus of both preventing and correcting them should be placed.

The difficulty of such an initiative is related to the disconnect between China's upper and lower levels of China's legal system.

For instance, the upper levels holds that extorting confessions by torture is strictly prohibited. But the vast majority of China's wrongful convictions on the local level came about exactly in this way — from confessions extracted by torture.

From filing charges to sentencing, every criminal case goes through a series of procedures involving at least a dozen judicial officers. In many cases, mistakes would have been discovered if just one officer had double-checked the critical legal points.

It's an ideal China's judiciary should aim to achieve, but based on the many botched cases that have been discovered, it's clear that judicial restraint and self-monitoring have not worked effectively.

We applaud the decision of these two officials to speak out. But these goals can only be realized if both the upper and lower levels of China's judicial system cooperate, which would mean workers throughout the legal system simply abiding by the law. Clearly, we're not there yet.

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http://rmfyb.chinacourt.org/paper/html/2013-05/06/content_62986.htm