MCLC: fast-paced trial leaves shadows

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: fast-paced trial leaves shadows
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/9/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/world/asia/murder-trial-of-bo-xilais-wife
-concludes.html

Fast-Paced Trial in China Murder Leaves Shadows
By ANDREW JACOBS 

HEFEI, China — Worried that a longtime friend and business associate might
harm her only child, Gu Kailai lured him to a rented villa in southwest
China, plied him with alcohol until he could take no more and then, when
he began to vomit and requested a drink of water, poured a poisonous
concoction into his mouth.

That, at least, is the prosecution’s version of what happened in a scandal
that has riveted many in China and outside the country for months,
presented in a neatly packaged capstone after a murder trial on Thursday
that lasted, with a break for lunch, less than seven hours. Ms. Gu, the
wife of the ousted party leader Bo Xilai, was said to have confessed to
the murder of the British businessman, Neil Heywood. Her state-appointed
defense lawyers asked for leniency.

“The criminal facts are clear; the evidence is solid,” a court official
said after the trial here in the provincial capital of Anhui Province,
more than 800 miles from the scene of the crime in Chongqing. The formal
guilty verdict will be announced at a later date.

Communist Party leaders clearly hoped the proceedings, which were closed
to the foreign news media and shown on television only in carefully
packaged snippets, would provide the Chinese public with a captivating
spectacle that would distract attention from the political scandal
surrounding Ms. Gu’s husband, a populist leader who left a trail of
corruption and abuse of power that deeply unnerved many of his fellow
Politburo members. But if they hoped the trial would also showcase a more
transparent, by-the-books legal system, they are likely to be disappointed.

Ms. Gu and her accomplice, Zhang Xiaojun, were deprived of their own legal
counsel and forced to accept a government-appointed lawyer. No defense
witnesses were produced during the trial. The defendants’ lawyers never
had a chance to review the prosecution’s evidence.

In a bitter twist of fate, Ms. Gu, herself a lawyer, once expressed an
unshakable faith in her nation’s legal system. In a book she wrote after
visiting the United States in 1998 and successfully representing a Chinese
company in a civil trial, she ridiculed the American justice system as
doddering and inept. “They can level charges against dogs and a court can
even convict a husband of raping his wife,” she wrote.
By contrast, China’s system was straightforward and judicious. “We don’t
play with words and we adhere to the principle of ‘based on facts,’ ” she
wrote. “You will be arrested, sentenced and executed as long as we
determine that you killed someone.”

In fact, many legal analysts say, her trial will reinforce the widely held
notion that despite three decades of legal reform, the Communist Party
keeps an iron grip on many judicial proceedings and dictates a denouement
that serves its political needs.

“This is not a trial that is likely to enhance China’s reputation for soft
power,” said Jerome A. Cohen, an expert in Chinese law at New York
University. “It’s not likely to improve foreign respect for China’s rule
of law and human rights.”

To be sure, legal analysts and rights advocates say China has come a long
way since the Maoist years, when justice was meted out according to the
whims of Communist Party officials often unfamiliar with the niceties of
criminal law. Since the 1980s, China has built hundreds of courthouses,
opened dozens of law schools and produced legislation that, on paper,
intricately describes the rights of defendants and sets out limits on the
police.

Stéphanie Balme, an expert on China’s justice system at the Institut
d’Études Politiques de Paris, said that ordinary Chinese had benefited
enormously from such reforms. “For small civil disputes and ordinary
justice, especially in regional cities, daily justice is much better,” she
said. “But when it comes to criminal justice, especially big trials and
ones that are political, there has been absolutely no fundamental change.”

With a conviction rate of 98 percent, Chinese prosecutors almost never
lose. Indeed, Ms. Gu’s prosecution showcased the system’s ruthless
efficiency. Weeks before the trial began, the official Xinhua news service
telegraphed that the outcome had already been decided by announcing that
the evidence was “irrefutable and substantial.”

Many legal analysts said the details that emerged on Thursday were
undoubtedly decided weeks ago by senior leaders, who are eager to close
the chapter on a scandal that has strained relations between Britain and
China, and roiled the once-a-decade leadership transition scheduled for
the fall.

“This trial is the outcome of a political struggle,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a
defense lawyer, referring to powerful enemies of Mr. Bo, a brash
up-and-comer who alienated many party luminaries. “Any trial to which the
central party pays this much attention had no chance of being fair.”

The terse statement issued by the court on Thursday evening appeared to
omit what those inside the courtroom said were far more detailed
revelations about the crime.

According to several accounts, prosecutors said that Ms. Gu herself
procured the poison, a commercially available product for exterminating
animals, and that the dispute with Mr. Heywood centered on his efforts to
strong-arm her son into paying approximately £14 million that he said he
was owed to him after a joint business venture went bust. At one point,
Mr. Heywood briefly detained the son, Bo Guagua, inside his home in
England, and then sent a threatening e-mail to Ms. Gu demanding the money,
a courtroom witnesses said. The e-mail, which was displayed in the
courtroom, threatened to “destroy” him.

Prosecutors also said that Wang Lijun, a trusted aide of Mr. Bo’s, met
with Ms. Gu a day after the murder and secretly recorded a conversation in
which she discussed the crime. The courtroom accounts said that Mr. Wang
had taken a blood sample from Mr. Heywood’s heart as potential evidence,
although it tested negative for poison. Mr. Wang, fearing for his life,
later sought refuge in the United States Consulate in Chengdu, where he
reportedly revealed details of the murder to American officials.

Legal analysts said that the mitigating circumstances presented by the
court — that Ms. Gu feared for the safety of her son — lessened the
likelihood that she would face the death penalty but did not rule it out.
The court official here in Hefei, Tang Yigan, portrayed Ms. Gu as
emotionally frail. He quoted her lawyers as saying that Ms. Gu’s “ability
to control her own behavior was weaker than a normal person.” But Mr. Tang
made a point of describing Ms. Gu as “healthy and emotionally stable”
during the trial. The lawyers, he added, said that they hoped for leniency
given that she had assisted the authorities with details about other
people’s crimes.

Until now, coverage of the case had been drastically limited inside China,
but on Thursday evening, CCTV reported on the trial with video from inside
the courtroom. The three-minute segment showed Ms. Gu, smiling and wearing
a black blazer over a white dress shirt, as she was led into the chambers.
She appeared to have gained considerable weight, and a relative expressed
shock, saying her face had changed dramatically since they had last met.

The camera lingered on two British consular officials in the courtroom.
The British Foreign Office, other than saying it attended the trial to
“fulfill our consular responsibilities to the Heywood family,” declined to
comment on the case.

The CCTV newscaster added one significant new detail: that four police
officials in Chongqing had been charged with helping Ms. Gu in a cover-up.
Those officials will be tried on Friday.

By focusing exclusively on the murder, said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese
politics at the Brookings Institution, party leaders were able to avoid
revealing details about the financial dealings of Ms. Gu and Mr. Bo, who
has been held incommunicado for months but still enjoys support among
certain factions of the leadership and ordinary Chinese.

The couple’s son did not return from the United States for the trial. He
declined to discuss the case, but in a statement Wednesday confirmed that
he had submitted witness testimony on behalf of his mother.
Li Xiaolin, a lawyer who was hired by Mr. Zhang’s family, was denied
access to him. But he was allowed to attend the trial and said the
state-appointed lawyers mounted a more vigorous defense than he had
expected. Still, there were glaring holes in the prosecution’s case.

“I found the evidence presented in court was incomplete,” he said in an
interview afterward. “Lots of pieces were missing.”

Mia Li, Patrick Zuo and Shi Da contributed research from Beijing. John F.
Burns contributed reporting from London.