Who punishes whom, who decides
Is the court really a place to search for the truth? Isn't it?
More than a decade ago, Zhou Fangzhengxing worriedly filmed [Even so, I didn't do it] ; now, it is Hirokazu Ee who put his condensed and profound thinking on this into the [Third Degree Suspect] .
Therefore, it is best not to compare it in the suspense/inference film system from the beginning.
A man who has murdered twice faces trial in court :
The lawyer only thinks about how to reduce the sentence, the prosecutor is eager to convict him quickly, and the judge only thinks about how to finish the case within the stipulated time.
Isn't this taken for granted? It has become common sense.
But Hirokazu Kee has to ask: If no one really cares about the truth during the trial , where is the truth and justice of the case?
As sharp and sharp as Camus's writing "The Outsider" to question the judicial system.
Yes, you know, this is not only a puzzle for some intellectuals, but also a dilemma for the judicial system and even legal philosophy .
01.
Regardless of the truth, only the legal facts
In "Legal High" , lawyer Gu Meimen once said to a novice novice:
"Fighting for the benefit of our clients, our lawyers can only do this."
"We are not gods . How could we know justice ? You think justice only exists in special hero dramas and "Shoun Jump"."
The protagonist of a certain legal drama has a mantra: "The truth is God's business, and we are only responsible for defending ."
Legal people are not self-comparable to God, are not responsible for searching for the truth, and fighting for the interests of their clients. This is professional ethics.
Just like in [Third Degree Suspect] , the lawyer Shigemori told his younger generations from the beginning: "The defense is not about making friends, and it does not require understanding and empathy."
Therefore, he contacted the prisoner Sansumi, launched inquiries and investigations, and did not intend to restore the truth of the incident from the beginning.
Collect evidence in favor of the client, such as seeing a purse stained with paint, and defending it with the version of "revenge killing and taking money after the fact" ;
The client changed his confession, and then went to the co-conspirator/accomplice to defend.
The defense strategy and actions of the lawyer Shige Sheng from the beginning are beyond reproach, and it can be seen that he is an elite lawyer upholding professional ethics.
In the American drama "Justice" (Gold Medal Lawyer), this concept of "the winner is justice" is amplified to a certain extent.
Four lawyers form an elite group. The four have their own specialties . Some go to court, some are responsible for the evidence chain, and some are responsible for handling the media.
The slogan is "100% innocence." They defended the rich, weaving stories from known evidence, and then piercing the prosecutor’s version of the story.
Court trials are no longer searching for the truth of the case, but exploring various "possibility" :
The comparison is, in the story version of the defense and the prosecution, which one has fewer loopholes , and which one is more convincing .
So, of course, the court is a place to explore the truth, but what is explored may not be the objective facts in our naive concept.
It is a legal fact that can be supported and proved by evidence .
Just like the Simpson Trial of the Century that has attracted worldwide attention , even if the whole world knows Simpson's crimes, it lacks evidence and that is something that does not exist.
Some people say that the best things invented by mankind are laws and courts .
In court, the best invention is probably the confrontation between the prosecution and the defense , through the confrontation between the two parties to realize the search for legal facts .
02.
Confrontation, progress and innovation
If I imagine the court scene under the common law system before the 18th century , it would be something like this:
The victim was also the prosecutor. He yelled in the court: "You robbed me somewhere , beat me, and took my money."
The defendant's thief will respond: "You are talking nonsense, I didn't rob you. I was sleeping at home at that time."
Then the other party "No! You lied! You robbed me!" "You lied! No one robbed you!"...
Then... the two sides quarreled together, and the judge touched his head. Hey, who knows what the hell is going on, just give it a sentence.
Yes, there were no defenders, no prosecutors, and no evidence in the court at that time.
Almost all relied on the statements of the two parties, so quarreling became a pot of porridge became the norm, and hence the name "quarrel-style trial" .
The "defendant speaks" trial mode lasted for a long time, until its shortcomings were really unbearable.
During the restoration of the Stuart dynasty in the 1780s, the British king began to brutally suppress political prisoners , and so-called treason trials were carried out in large numbers at this time.
Due to the lack of attention to evidence and procedures, a large number of false testimony was made, and the reliance on oral evidence gave birth to serious torture to extract a confession .
And without the help of professional and defense lawyers, almost as long as they are charged, they can hardly escape their crimes.
So this time created a large number of miscarriages of justice and malicious trial judge, such as the famous "bloody assizes case" and "Catholic conspiracy case" it would have occurred during this period.
In this situation, after the Glorious Revolution, the Whigs who had regained control of the parliament began to reform the trial system in response to the previous suppression.
As a result, the trial law at the end of the 17th century had begun to introduce defense lawyers into criminal proceedings; but in fact, lawyers' intervention still had to be in the 1830s .
In the 1930s, as defense lawyers intervened in criminal felonies, the confrontation system with the prosecutor began to take shape.
But in fact, this process was quite long. Until the middle and late 18th century, only a few cases were tried in court through the adversarial system.
The background of the British drama "Garo Lawyer" is at the end of the 18th century. At that time, lawyers had not yet obtained full defense rights.
They can only cross-examine defendants and witnesses under all kinds of interference and randomness , and their influence is still very limited.
Since then, after nearly two hundred years of development, the confrontation system was established, developed and perfected, and it has become the most basic judicial system in the current common law system .
03.
The truth is just a by-product
The adversarial trial appeared in the face of progress and innovation , which undoubtedly brought the court order into the era of true modern civilization.
In the major legal dramas, the prosecutor and the defender clashed with each other, and presented countless passionate and rigorous logical feasts to the audience .
In [Twelve Angry Men] , the jury's process of clarifying the law and the facts after the battle between the prosecutor and the defense is over, and it is deeply infected by procedural justice.
But on the other hand, the adversarial style from its emergence and development to the present is also the process of the emergence and development of its problems .
When the prosecution and the defense both aim to defeat the other party's absolute victory, driven by the purpose of utilitarianism, the truth becomes less important .
Collect and submit evidence selectively, show only evidence that is beneficial to oneself, and hide and distort evidence that is not good for oneself.
It has become the norm in the industry .
Under the adversarial system, judges need to remain absolutely neutral, and they are not obligated to find out the truth on their own initiative.
The judge and the jury can only choose the most convincing one among the "possibility" given by the prosecution and the defense .
So, just like in [Rashomon] , each population has a completely different version of the story;
The trial seems to have become such a "who do you believe" game.
In [Prosecution Witness] , this system flaw can be used to forge witness testimony, and the case can be reversed;
In Camus's "The Outsider," because of the habitual thinking of the prisoner "going on a date after his mother dies," the jury can completely deny a person and then convict him.
In [Third Degree Suspect] , the prisoner Sansumi overturned the testimony again and again, and finally used the judge's "distrust" to achieve self-destruction.
At the end of the film, there is a blank sentence "Who will punish whom, who will decide?"
The prisoner in "The Outsider" is isolated from the trial from beginning to end. The viewer pays attention to his life, to his mother and girlfriend, but not to the truth of the case .
The truth is just a by-product, and the truth is just an outsider in every trial.
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Author/curl
The article was first published on the WeChat public account "Pocier"
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