MCLC: suspended death sentence for Gu

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: suspended death sentence for Gu
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(8/20/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/world/asia/china-defers-death-p
enalty-for-gu-kailai.html

China Defers Death Penalty for Disgraced Official’s Wife
By ANDREW JACOBS 

BEIJING — A Chinese court on Monday handed Gu Kailai, the wife of a
disgraced Communist Party leader, a suspended death sentence for killing a
British business associate who she reportedly feared was plotting to harm
her son. In the Chinese legal system, such a sentence is tantamount to
life in prison.

Ms. Gu could have been executed soon after the guilty verdict was
announced, although most analysts had thought such a punishment unlikely.
The sentence was announced with a two-year reprieve, meaning that the
threat of execution would be lifted after two years, contingent upon her
good behavior. Some legal experts said she could ultimately serve fewer
than a dozen years.

In news footage televised Monday afternoon by the state broadcaster, China
Central Television, Ms. Gu stood in the dock and calmly praised the
verdict 
<http://video.sina.com.cn/p/news/c/v/2012-08-20/142661844547.html>.  “The
sentence is just and shows immense respect for the law, reality and life,”
she said.

The verdict and sentence appear to wrap up one of the more lurid chapters
of a sweeping scandal that brought down Ms. Gu’s husband, Bo Xilai , and
challenged the Communist Party during a politically delicate,
once-a-decade leadership transition that is set to culminate in the fall.

Ms. Gu’s main accomplice, Zhang Xiaojun, a household employee, was
sentenced to nine years in prison for what was said to be his limited role
in helping Ms. Gu murder the Briton, Neil Heywood, with a cyanide-based
poison.

Shortly after the verdict, Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei
Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province, told reporters that the
court had weighed Ms. Gu’s confession, her testimony implicating others
and the litany of psychological problems she is reported to have suffered.
In the end, however, he said Mr. Heywood’s threats in no way justified her
crimes.

He added that the defendants had agreed to not appeal their sentences.

He Zhengsheng, the lawyer for Mr. Heywood’s family, told reporters outside
the courthouse that he did not object to the sentence. In a statement, the
British Embassy said it welcomed “the fact that the Chinese authorities
have investigated the death of Neil Heywood, and tried those they
identified as responsible,” adding that it had made clear to Chinese
officials that it did not want the death penalty to be applied.

Although few questioned Ms. Gu’s role in the murder, rights advocates
criticized her prosecution as driven more by politics than by exacting
legal procedure. Relatives say she was forced to accept
government-appointed lawyers, who did not have access to case files before
the trial began.

Communist Party leaders will now turn their attention to Mr. Bo, once an
aspirant to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee and the former
party boss of the southwestern municipality of Chongqing.

Mr. Bo incurred the wrath of many prominent leaders who were unnerved by
his brash, populist style and his revival of revolutionary songs and
sloganeering during his time in Chongqing. He was deposed last spring
after a trusted aide, Wang Lijun, entered the United States Consulate in a
nearby city and reportedly revealed details of the murder and subsequent
cover-up to American officials.

Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang have been detained and are awaiting their fate. Also
on Monday, four Chongqing police officials who confessed to helping cover
up the murder were sentenced to jail terms of 5 to 11 years.

Legal analysts and political experts said Ms. Gu’s suspended death
sentence was most likely calibrated to satisfy the Chinese public and the
British government, along with supporters of Mr. Bo. He remains a darling
among leftists and certain factions of the leadership who admired his
zealous campaign against organized crime and his efforts to address some
of the economic disparities that have accompanied three decades of
free-market reform.

Although China’s propaganda officials have restricted news media coverage
of the case, the murder of Mr. Heywood and prosecution of Ms. Gu have
riveted a nation unaccustomed to seeing members of the political elite so
publicly exposed. Some historians have likened Ms. Gu’s downfall to that
of Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong who was accused of
counterrevolutionary crimes after his death but whose televised show trial
in 1980 was far more accessible to the Chinese people.

Ms. Gu’s trial on Aug. 9 was declared “public,” although foreign reporters
were blocked from attending. Two British diplomats were allowed in the
courtroom, but barred from recording the proceedings or taking notes.

On Monday, nearly all the courtroom seats were filled by government
workers who had been dispatched to the hearing, according to one attendee
who said she was from the local public security bureau.

The daughter of a revolutionary luminary, Ms. Gu, 53, was among the first
generation of lawyers educated after the Cultural Revolution, the decade
of social chaos during which schools were closed. As her husband rose
through the party hierarchy, she ran successful law practice and wrote a
book on the foibles of American courts — and what she described as the
ruthless efficiency of China’s legal system.

More recently, the state news media have portrayed her as a mentally
unstable woman addled by antidepressants and “sedative hypnotic drugs.”
According to the official Xinhua news agency, the murder plot was hatched
after Mr. Heywood threatened Ms. Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, and demanded the
return of $22 million he claimed was owed to him after a real estate
venture failed.

The official accounts of the crime also sought to place some of the blame
on the victim, painting him as a craven businessman who at one point
“detained” the son at a residence in Britain, although it provided no
details.

Bo Guagua, 24, a recent graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy
School of Government who is still in the United States, declined to
comment on the verdict.

After Mr. Heywood’s threats were revealed, reportedly in an e-mail he sent
to the family, Ms. Gu devised a scheme to kill him with animal poison
procured from a public market, according to an account of the trial issued
by Xinhua. In November, Mr. Heywood, 41, was lured to a hotel room in
Chongqing, where Ms. Gu plied him with whiskey and tea.

When he became drunk and began to vomit, Mr. Zhang, the family employee,
helped him into bed, prosecutors said. Ms. Gu then took the deadly
concoction that Mr. Zhang had been carrying and dripped it into Mr.
Heywood’s mouth after he asked for water. She then scattered pills around
the room to make it appear that Mr. Heywood had died of a drug overdose.

Two days later, workers at the Lucky Holiday Hotel discovered Mr.
Heywood’s body; the police quickly ruled his death the result of excessive
drinking and cremated his remains.

Mr. Zhang’s relatively light sentence reflected his limited role;
prosecutors said he had participated in the scheme, after initially
declining, because of his loyalty to a family that had employed him since
2005.
Both defendants reportedly confessed. According to the account provided by
Xinhua and confirmed by several people who sat through the trial, Ms. Gu
apologized to the court, saying she had caused “great losses to the party
and the country, for which I ought to shoulder the responsibility.” She
also described the case as “a huge stone weighing on me for more than half
a year.”

Even if it emphasized her psychological troubles, the court did not
absolve her, saying she managed to meticulously orchestrate a murder and
then planned an elaborate cover-up. He Weifang, a legal scholar, said a
suspended death sentence with two-year reprieve was rooted in imperial
law. “A suspended death penalty is something that only exists in China,”
he said. “Mao thought it was a good idea and wrote it into China’s modern
criminal law in the 1950s because he believed that anyone can be educated
and reformed.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research from Hefei, China.