[
    {
        "id": 209475,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 132,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "110\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\nadvisory offices were established in most cities throughout the country. The year 1979 also witnessed the beginnings of a major nationwide campaign to publicize the new laws and explain the rights and obligations of citizens contained therein. An impressive number of legal publications have appeared, including an increasing number of law journals. Numerous delegations of Chinese lawyers have visited abroad, and a number of Chinese students have been sent abroad to study Western law.\n\nThe new system, with some minor changes, harks back to that instituted in 1954. The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the general administration of justice and the training of judicial cadres. The court system is composed of the Supreme People's Court, Higher People's Courts, Intermediate People's Courts, and Basic People's Courts. There are also special courts: military, railway transport, water transport, forestry, as well as special branch courts dealing with economic affairs. There is a two-trial (one appeal) system, and trials are open unless they involve state secrets, matters of personal shame such as rape, or juveniles. As in the 1950s, judges, except in minor civil and criminal cases or where otherwise specified by law, are assisted by elected lay assessors, who are members of the trial court and enjoy equal rights with its judges when the judges perform their duties in court. Court presidents are elected by people's congresses at various levels while judges are appointed by the standing committees of these congresses. Courts are no longer accountable to local governments, but only to the people's congress of their constituency. The Supreme Court has been given an expanded role over its 1954 predecessor. While only the Standing Committee of the NPC has the authority to interpret the Constitution and other laws, the Supreme Court can give explanations on questions concerning the specific application of laws and decrees in judicial procedure. It also must rule on all death sentences.12\n\nThe right of defense is spelled out in the Criminal Code of Procedure, which provides that the accused may either defend himself or request the assistance of a relative or guardian, a member of his unit, people's organization, or other citizens approved by the court, or a lawyer. Lawyers function under provisions contained in Articles 28 and 29 of the Criminal Code of Procedure and \"The Provisional Regulations Governing the",
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    {
        "id": 209481,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 138,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "116\n\nW. ALLYN RICKETT\n\n' Mao Zedong, “Hunan nongmin yundong kaocha baokao,” Mao Zedong xuanji (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1964), 16.\n\n* See Patricia Griffin, The Chinese Communist Treatment of Counter-Revolutionaries: 1924-1949. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.\n\nIt is interesting that in many cases involving homicide resulting from marriage or family problems, the accused was formally sentenced in accordance with the Marriage Law of June 1950, which in itself simply stated that persons guilty of such an offense would bear criminal responsibility before the law.\n\n\"The right of defense was provided for in Art. 12 of the \"Provisional Regulations of the Shanghai People's Court Governing the Disposal of Civil and Criminal Cases\" (Aug. 11, 1949) and in Art. 6 of the \"Organic Regulations of the People's Tribunals\" (July 20, 1950), but was left out of the \"Provisional Organic Regulations of the People's Courts\" (Sept. 3, 1950). I know of no case where defense was actually permitted during the pre-Constitution period. Even appeal was very rare. The first public notice of the use of lawyers that I know of involved thirteen American nationals charged with espionage who were tried and then released in November 1954 by a military tribunal.\n\n冉\n\n* According to an editorial in the Guangming Ribao (Jan. 27, 1957), by 1957 there were some 670 legal advisory offices with 2,100 professional lawyers scattered throughout the country. Fees were paid by clients to the legal advisory office according to their ability to pay. Lawyers were paid salaries by the advisory office. As a defense counsel, people's lawyers were not considered an agent of the accused. They constituted an independent party at the trial and were not bound by the will of the defendant. Their duty was to help clarify the facts and present whatever extenuating circumstances might assist the judges in rendering a fair sentence.\n\n* Codification had been called for as far back as the Yenan Period and in 1948 it was discussed by the Central Committee of the CCP. This led to the formation of a Law Codification Committee in 1950. However, nothing seems to have been done until after the passage of the Constitution. Finally in Nov. 1956 it was announced that a draft criminal code consisting of some 261 articles had been completed by the Law Section of the Standing Committee of the NPC and had been turned over to the Standing Committee's Bills Committee for discussion and amendments.\n\n* Renmin Ribao, Dec. 12, 1957 and Zhenfa yanjiu, 1958, No. 1, 18-23. * Zhengfa yanjiu, 1958, No. 1, 10-17.\n\n10 For an excellent survey of developments during the period 1978-80, see Shao-chuan Leng, \"Criminal Justice in Post-Mao China: Some Preliminary Observations,\" China Quarterly, 87 (Sept. 1981), 440-469.\n\n\"For an English translation of all seven laws, see Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: PRC, 27 and 30 July 1979. The Criminal Code and Criminal Code of Procedure have also been translated by Jerome Cohen, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 73,1 (Spring 1982), 135-203, and by Chin Kim, The American Series of Foreign Penal Codes, No. 25 (Littleton, Colorado: Fred B. Rothman & Co., 1982).\n\n12 Article 43 of the Criminal Code limits the use of the death penalty to only \"the most heinous offenses\" (homicide, rape, arson, robbery, dike-breaching, planting explosives, embezzling public property, and counter-revolutionary crimes). It also stipulates that unless immediate execution is mandatory, a two-year reprieve may be granted. If the offender shows evidence of repentance, the death penalty may be converted to a life or term sentence.",
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    {
        "id": 209496,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 153,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "131 \n\na Chinese, \n\nwas deeply concerned to do justice to the defendant a foreigner, a stranger in Britain and instructed the jury to disregard the matter since it had not been conclusively proved that the slips of paper were relevant to the murder charge. But the sinister import of the Chinese characters must have impressed itself upon the jurymen and it would be too much to expect that they did not speculate among themselves as to the evidential value of the translated sentences. If, in fact, the words did refer to Mrs. Miao's contemplated destruction (which seems likely), then her husband must have had murder in his heart before he left America, not long after his marriage to Siu Wai-sheung, a rich woman. Again, if this is so, it was a premeditated murder, not one born of impulse or passion, like most domestic murders in Europe and China, yesterday or today.\n\nMiao, Travers Humphreys tells us, was ably defended by Mr. J. C. Jackson K.C., but he had little to go on.35 The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming in its assemblage; the case for the defence speculative and insubstantial. Miao, through his counsel, argued that he and his wife had been followed by a gang of Oriental jewel thieves; and evidence was obtained from a few persons that two Oriental gentlemen, Chinese or Japanese, had been seen in the Derwentwater area at the time of the crime. These shadowy figures were neither identified nor located. The jury was left with the following puzzle: if members of an international gang, specialising in the theft of jewellery, had robbed and killed Mrs. Miao, why did one, or both, then attempt to sexually assault the victim of their greed? That was certainly not professional criminal practice. And, furthermore, forensic scientists had already demonstrated, convincingly, that the assault upon poor Mrs. Miao had been faked. There were, for example, no bruises upon her body. Who, then, would benefit from the murder, if we dismiss the shadowy robbers? Surely only the bereft husband.\n\nThe defence was not able to weaken the structure of circumstantial evidence deployed by the prosecution. The jury was out for an hour and a half and brought in a verdict of guilty. Mr. Justice Humphreys then sentenced Miao to death, on which he cried out 'I am not guilty!' and embarked on a voluble defence of his actions until stopped by the Judge.\n\nHis appeal was heard at the Court of Criminal Appeal,",
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    {
        "id": 209505,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 162,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "140\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\n**Sax Rohmer, pseudonym of A.S. Ward (1886-1959). Rohmer's Chinese master-villain first appeared in Dr. Fu Manchu (1913), the start of a series of thrillers about Fu.\n\n27 His real name was Chang Wan but he was known as Brilliant Chang to police and public.\n\n**The Times for April 10 and 11, 1924. See also Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-end (London: Faber, 1941). One of Chang's clients was Brenda Dean Paul, a notorious upper-class drug-addict, daughter of Sir Aubrey Dean Paul, a former Lord Mayor of London.\n\n\"Some information about Miss Siu is given in the South China Morning Post on October 26, 1928. See also the Hongkong Telegraph for June 23, 1928.\n\n**Travers Humphreys, op. cit., p. 163.\n\n\"1 South China Morning Post, December 7, 1928.\n\nNecrophiliacs are rare but not unknown. The most famous was surely Sergent (Sergeant) Bertrand, whose activities are discussed in Marcel Montarron, Histoire des crimes sexuels (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1971) 113-13. Another extraordinary necrophiliac Henri Blot, 'Le vampire de Saint-Ouen'—is discussed in Daniel Riche, Histoires criminelles de Paris/Ile-de-France (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1980) 407-416.\n\n**The case is examined in Sir Travers Humphreys' A Book of Trials, op. cit. But see also Christmas Humphreys, Seven Murders (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946); E. Spencer Shew, A Companion to Murder (London: Cassell, 1960); and C.E. Bechhofer-Roberts, Sir Travers Humphreys: His Career and Cases (London: John Lane, 1936).\n\n*Sir Travers Humphreys (1867-1956). Called to the Bar, 1889. He was a distinguished criminal lawyer before becoming a Judge of the King's Bench Division of the High Court, 1928-1951.\n\n*Joseph Cooksey Jackson K.C. (1879-1938) of the Northern Circuit. **Criminal Appeal Reports, vol. 21, 1930.\n\n**Travers Humphreys, op. cit, 162-163.\n\n06\n\n18 Ibid. 167.\n\n*Ibid, 168.\n\n40 J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese; or, Notes Connected With China (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1925, fifth edition). Dyer Ball writes: \"The Chinese are not only remote from us as regards position on the globe, but they are our opposites in almost every action and thought\" (668).\n\n\"The late Victorians were much amused by Pidgin English. See Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-Song; or Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect (London: Trubner, 1876).\n\n42 Op. cit., 164.\n\n\"Herbert John Bennett was accused of strangling his wife on Yarmouth Beach. The body was left in such a position as to suggest attempted rape. See Julian Symons, A Reasonable Doubt (London: Cresset Press, 1962).\n\n**Op. cit., 168.\n\n*A son and a daughter (Wai-sheung) were born to his primary wife. His other wives produced over ten children, two of whom were later returned students from the United States. See the South China Morning Post, June 25, 1928.",
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