Recently, Mr. Zheng Xian, a lawyer from Beijing King&Capital Law Firm, represented a case of job misappropriation involving more than 47 million dollars, was sentenced in the first trial. The collegial court recognized the merit clues submitted by the lawyer and ruled that the client constituted a merit. The public prosecutor re-submitted the sentencing opinion and re-signed the written statement in court, and the sentence was further reduced on the basis of the previous plea of guilty to a lighter sentence.
Case Background
This case is a core team member of a company, dissatisfied with his treatment for a long time without improvement, desperate to misappropriation of the company's property, and then the audit led to the incident. In its initial communication with the company had come to consult a lawyer, through the analysis of the lawyer that the person concerned in this case has a high criminal risk, to provide them with a number of suggestions, hoping that it will repay the company as soon as possible to strive for understanding and take the initiative to surrender. But due to the so-called “relationship” compulsion by the client misjudged the situation, failed to listen to the lawyer's advice.
Processing
When the family contacted the lawyer again, the case has been investigated by the two times back into the examination and prosecution stage. In the lawyer met with: the party to the “relationship” paid millions of “coordination fee”, not only failed to settle the matter, but also detained so far. In the remorse of the re- find zheng lawyer, hope to get help.
Based on the understanding of the case, the lawyer intervened after the rapid start work. By reading the file also confirms the prejudgement - this case in the qualitative fight space is small and the amount of money involved is particularly huge, if only from these two places, it is difficult to achieve an effective defense. After verifying the evidence with the client and communicate many times, he chose to plead guilty to a lighter sentence. Accordingly, the lawyer and the contractor to fully consult with, provide a number of reasons to reduce the sentence, the party finally in the prosecution stage signed a plea of guilty and acceptance of punishment.
But the lawyer's work should not stop at pleading guilty and accepting punishment, the party signed the statement is not the “end” of the defense. The lawyer's defense does not mean that the suspect/defendant of the plea of guilty and punishment, but in the plea of guilty and punishment on the basis of the professional point of view for the client to fight for greater legal rights and interests. Although a relatively light sentence has been secured in this case, the lawyer still kept meeting with the client, digging into the details and continuing to verify the evidence in the case with the client. In a meeting, he casually mentioned a fact that has nothing to do with the case, the defense lawyer keenly found that this may be an important merit clues. The client claimed that he had also put forward several clues during the investigation stage in the hope of getting credit, but none of them were responded to, and there was almost no hope in this regard. However, the lawyer encouraged him not to give up and to try again no matter how big or small the hope was. Upon his recollection, the most important evidence of the clue was stored in the seized cell phone. The defense lawyer immediately fixed this issue by means of the interview transcript and applied to the court for verification. In his opinion, the lawyer wrote: “The defense believes that although the clues he provided have nothing to do with the charges and facts of this case, whether the suspect has meritorious circumstances will directly affect the final sentence, which is directly related to his own personal interests.”
The lawyer then learned that another case-handling authority had taken the initiative to ask the client relevant questions inside the detention center. After another half year of waiting, the meritorious lead was finally verified as true.
Case Summary
The lesson of this case is profound. The victimized company's authority appointment is chaotic, there is a supervision “blind zone”, suffered huge losses; the person concerned can not correctly face the treatment problem, committed a crime, although the later can take the initiative to consult a lawyer, but gullible “relationship” was cheated of a huge amount of money, missed the best time to negotiate with the company to pay back. Missed the best time to negotiate with the company to pay back the compensation.
In the case of guilty plea, the lawyer should fully perform the defense duties, from the perspective of effective defense to consider the problem, pay attention to the details of the case, as far as possible for the client to fight for the maximum rights and interests.
