“Afterwards, we accidentally found the criminal court judge of the Haixi intermediate court and the director of the Tianjun county court were remotely giving instructions in a WeChat group,” the letter said, referring to a messaging and social media platform.
According to liberal-leaning newspaper Southern Weekly, one of the lawyers involved in the trial, Liu Zheng of the Beijing Zebo Law Firm, took a photo of the judge’s computer screen, which displayed a WeChat group that included several judicial officers and staff of local courts.
The photo showed county court director Fan Xuhua saying in the group chat: “You don’t have to communicate with him about it.”
Then Hasi Chaolu, president of the criminal court at Haixi intermediate court – the court that will hear the case if it is appealed – directed the county court judge to “just interrupt” and “be tough, don’t speak randomly”, according to the photo, which was published by domestic media.
The lawyers called the police, who confiscated the computer.
The lawyers also reported the incident to the Qinghai provincial prosecutor’s office and the Qinghai Higher People’s Court, which said they would investigate.
According to the letter, the lawyers have submitted an application to the county court to have the case tried at a court outside Haixi.
The Tianjun county court did not respond to an interview request from the Post.
The Haixi intermediate court blamed Liu, the lawyer, instead.
In response to the accusations, the Haixi intermediate court issued a notice on Weibo, saying the lawyer had disobeyed court discipline in taking the photo.
It also said that the case belonged to one of four categories that could seek “key supervision”, and Haixi had followed protocols in its instructions to a lower court. It only admitted that the manner of instruction was irregular.
After the incident went viral online, many lawyers around the country spoke up to say they disagreed with the Haixi court.
Others said the Haixi court had abused the idea of “key supervision”.
A document by the Supreme People’s Court in 2021 said four types of cases could require “key supervision”: complex and sensitive cases, cases that might affect social stability, those that might have a conflicting judgment with a similar case, and if the judge was reported to have engaged in illegal conduct during the trial.
When a case is classified as one of these four types, the presiding judge may supervise certain aspects that need attention during a trial, such as demanding a report on case progress, evaluating the results, reviewing case files or sitting in on a trial.
“If the judges directly gave instructions or interfered with the case, then they are not following protocol,” Lao Dongyan, a prominent China policy critic and law professor with Tsinghua University, said during a live-streamed discussion on Weibo earlier this month with the Hongfan Institute of Legal and Economic Studies, a private liberal think tank.
Well-known lawyer Xu Xin wrote on WeChat that such incidents were quite common, and he had experienced or heard of at least four.
He said that a decade ago, when the Zhangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Fujian province was hearing a case on organised crime, court police passed a note to the presiding judge. The lawyer questioned the action and the judge immediately adjourned proceedings, he wrote.
Xu recalled another such case in 2022, at a court in Zoucheng, Shandong province. The court president, prosecutor general and deputy party secretary of the local political and legal affairs commission were found to have given orders during a trial from a meeting room on the floor below that had been set up as a “trial headquarters”. None of the three was part of the trial.
