Southern Weekend 2009-04-29
Two prominent Shanghai attorneys, Tao Wuping and Zhai Jian, spoke with journalists about their roles in defending eight high level officials indicted on various corruption charges in a series of high profile social security-related corruption and embezzlement cases. Their defense strategies were limited, as is often the case in corruption cases, by their clients' extensive confessions—due to “many years of undergoing Party education”—to Party and government investigators and admissions of guilt at trial. The lawyers' work focused on minimizing potential sentences both by arguing that some corruption-type activities were not actually in violation of the law and by emphasizing the high level of contrition and cooperation defendants had demonstrated. Court judgments in each case did not, however, formally incorporate defense counsel arguments, instead finding defendants guilty of questionable charges and not recognizing their “positive contributions,” but in sentencing, the courts seemed to acknowledge “defense opinions” by giving sentences well short of the statute-allowed maximums.
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