Lawyers slam ‘sabotage’ of legal system
Photo appears to show court staff instructing judge via WeChat during trial
Most Chinese lawyers have low expectations about the independence of Chinese courts, but many were still shocked to see a judge receive real-time instructions from his supervisors in the middle of a trial earlier this month.
The incident took place on May 11 at the Tianjun county court in Haixi Mongol and Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Qinghai province. About an hour into the trial, the presiding judge suddenly adjourned the proceedings, according to a public letter published on Weibo by a group of lawyers who were defending clients in the case.
“Afterwards, we accidentally found the criminal court judge of the Haixi intermediate court and the director of the Tianjun county court were remotely giving instructions in a WeChat group,” the letter said.
According to liberal-leaning newspaper Southern Weekly, one of the lawyers involved in the trial, Liu Zheng of the Beijing Zebo Law Firm, took a photo of the judge’s computer screen, which displayed a WeChat group that included several judicial officers and staff of local courts.
It showed county court director Fan Xuhua saying in the group chat: “You don’t have to communicate with him about it.”
Then Hasi Chaolu, president of the criminal court at Haixi intermediate court – the court that will hear the case if it is appealed – directed the county court judge to “just interrupt” and “be tough”, according to the photo.
“Their actions blatantly sabotage our legal system where the appeal court’s decision is the final one, and those involved should be probed for malpractice or even criminal activity,” the public letter said.
The lawyers called the police, who confiscated the computer. The lawyers also reported the incident to the Qinghai provincial prosecutor’s office and the Qinghai Higher People’s Court, which said they would investigate.
According to the letter, the lawyers have submitted an application to the county court to have the case tried at a court outside Haixi. The Tianjun county court did not respond to an interview request from the Post.
In response to the accusations, the Haixi intermediate court issued a notice on Weibo, saying Liu the lawyer had disobeyed court discipline in taking the photo. It also said that the case belonged to one of four categories that could seek “key supervision”, and Haixi had followed protocols in its instructions to a lower court. It only admitted that the manner of instruction was irregular.
After the incident went viral online, many lawyers around the country spoke up to say they disagreed with the Haixi court.
“The superiors’ instruction sabotaged the court’s right to independently exercise judicial power,” Wang Cailiang, a Beijingbased criminal lawyer, wrote on Weibo. “If a court and its superior could collude in a lawsuit … then why do we need evidence? Why do we need the law?” He said as the courts became “buddies”, the higher court’s supervision weakened, and this was why some cases were wrongly decided and not corrected on appeal.
A document by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021 said four types of cases could require “key supervision”: complex and sensitive cases, cases that might affect social stability, those that might have a conflicting judgment with a similar case, and if the judge was reported to have engaged in illegal conduct during the trial.
When a case is classified as one of these types, the presiding judge may supervise aspects that need attention during a trial, such as demanding a report on progress, evaluating the results, reviewing case files or sitting in on a trial.
“If the judges directly gave instructions or interfered with the case, then they are not following protocol,” Lao Dongyan, a law professor at Tsinghua University, said during a live-streamed discussion on Weibo.
Well-known lawyer Xu Xin wrote on WeChat that such incidents were quite common. He said that a decade ago, when the Zhangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Fujian province was hearing a case on organised crime, court police passed a note to the presiding judge. The lawyer questioned the action and the judge immediately adjourned proceedings, he wrote.
Xu recalled another such case in 2022, at a court in Zoucheng, Shandong province. The court president, prosecutor general and deputy party secretary of the local political and legal affairs commission were found to have given orders during a trial from a meeting room on the floor below that had been set up as a “trial headquarters”. None of the three was part of the trial.