Some 1,430,000 criminal verdicts at court of first instance were issued in 2022. Of those, 354 were not guilty judgments, the NGO Safeguard Defenders says.
Hard to make much out of this data. Does this mean the further collapse of judicial efficacy in China? Or does this more or less reflect a different typo of judicial system where prosecutors will only pursue when conviction is guaranteed like the Japanese system?
where prosecutors will only pursue when conviction is guaranteed like the Japanese system
As someone who lived in Japan, let me offer you an alternative view. The Japanese legal system is caught in a circular spiral of injustice, where the perception that prosecutors only bring charges if someone is guilty makes judges extremely unlikely to ever rule someone innocent. It’s extremely dangerous, because once charges are brought against you, it’s not an “innocent until proven guilty” system, it’s a, “They wouldn’t be charging you if you weren’t likely guilty, because they only pursue charges in the first place if you’re almost certainly guilty.” Here is a great interview with a pair of veteran Japanese criminal law professors about the problems with the system.
WRT China, given past data about conviction rates, this shift almost certainly indicates that they have now fully moved to a system in which there is no actual judicial review of innocence versus guilt. The judiciary only functions to hand out sentences. The government accusing you imparts guilt. They do not have an adversarial system in China (prosecutor vs defense), but an inquisitorial one, in which both judges and “assessors” interrogate accused parties, and then decide for themselves on guilt. The accused have no one who advocates for them, and often are not allowed to advocate for themselves at all.
