Recently, Beijing King&Capital Law Firm, Mr. Zheng Xian and Mr. Luo Xueying received a judgment from a court of second instance, in which the two of them participated in the defense of a case in which the client was accused of aiding criminal activities in the information network, and after deliberations by the panel, they adopted some of the opinions of the defenders, and sentenced the client to a suspended sentence.

Case Background

This case involved multiple defendants. In the first trial, the defense lawyer initiated the illegal evidence exclusion procedure on the grounds of inducing confessions, hoping to exclude the client's confession of guilt, but it was rejected by the court due to the failure to provide effective clues and the improper way of initiating the procedure. At the same time, based on the client's retraction of his confession in court, the panel sentenced him to a term of imprisonment based on the facts of the case and his guilty attitude.

The client was newly married and was extremely nervous about the upcoming sentence, and wanted to file an appeal but feared that it would be ineffective, so his family rushed to King&Capital Law Firm during the appeal period to seek help from the two lawyers.

Process of handling the case

Lawyers through the family statement and carefully read the verdict analysis that, although the factual part of the case there is some controversy, but due to the crime in judicial practice, there is objective imputation of the situation, and often weaken the subjective intent of the standard of proof, once the person will be the bank card, U shield and other items handed over to the criminals, that is, convicted of constituting a crime, in order to completely exonerate the possibility is low. In addition, in this case, the party had in the investigation, prosecution stage, respectively, there are two confessions, want to completely overthrow is even more difficult.

The two lawyers accepted the commission, after reading the discussion of the defense strategy. In the characterization, on the one hand, through the interpretation of the law, to explain to the party legal provisions and judicial practice, and ask his willingness to plead guilty. On the other hand, combing through the evidence in the case, still from the point of view of unclear facts and insufficient evidence, the first instance judgment that constitutes a crime of the system of proof questioned. In terms of sentencing, by searching for analogous cases and comparing the offenses in different cases with the final sentence one by one, it was suggested that the court of second instance should change the sentence to a lighter one even if the verdict constituted a crime. Subsequently, the client submitted a letter of repentance to the court stating that he was willing to do his best to compensate others, and the lawyer actively communicated and exchanged views with the contractor judge. Eventually, the case was changed to a suspended sentence, and the client avoided a prison sentence.

Case Summary

At a time when criminal cases are being “decriminalized”, the crime of “helping the letter” has ranked among the top three in terms of the number of criminal cases prosecuted in China. In judicial practice, the subjective intent of this crime is not clear in the determination and proof of the crime itself, and the case-handling authorities often determine the cognitive and volitional factors from the perspective of the person concerned, such as “should have known that it was a crime” and “letting the harmful results happen”, which leads to a lower standard of proof and a higher likelihood of conviction in some cases. As a result, the standard of proof in some cases was lowered and the likelihood of conviction was raised.

This case was eventually re-sentenced, reflecting the prudence and fairness of the second instance panel. The lawyer here suggests that the act of selling or lending bank cards or U-shields to others carries a high criminal risk, and it is very likely that helping others to commit illegal and criminal acts will lead to one's own incarceration.