When the Spring Festival holiday and the legal-themed movie "Article 20" collide together, it is unreasonable not to watch it. However, the lawyer's feeling after watching the legal drama is slightly different, this may be an occupational disease, or it may be the perception generated by years of practice.
The title of the movie "Article 20" refers to the justifiable defense clause in Article 20 of the Criminal Law of our country. In 1997, this provision was enshrined in the Penal Code in the form we see now. However, it is rarely used in judicial practice, and even fewer are used successfully. According to the statistics of a local procuratorate, only 4 of the 100 cases in which justified defense was used as a defense opinion were successful, 20 were found to be excessive defense, and the remaining 76 were found to be intentional injuries. The justifiable defense clause, which was originally intended to encourage and protect the struggle against lawlessness, has become a constraint and obstacle in practice.
Should we stop unlawful infringement, and in what way should we stop unlawful infringement?
In 2020, the "Guiding Opinions on the Application of the Justified Defense System in Accordance with Law" was promulgated, which clearly stipulates that justifiable defense is the right granted by law to citizens to protect their rights and interests from illegal infringement, that is, "the law cannot be conceded to the lawless". When determining legitimate defense, it is necessary to fully consider the defender's state of urgency and nervousness when facing an unlawful offense based on the specific circumstances in which the defender is defending and taking into account the possible reactions of ordinary people in similar situations. The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate have respectively made more detailed provisions on the application of specific circumstances in the form of guiding cases.
The justifiable defense clause, which took two hours in the movie and twenty years in reality, finally got rid of the embarrassing situation of the "zombie clause".
When the surrounding audience was moved by the lines "The law makes the crime of the bad guys more expensive, not the cost of letting the good guys take action is greater", "We are not handling cases, we are doing other people's lives", "All the right things have a price, but you can't stop doing it because there is a price", what flashed in my mind was the scenes of judges, prosecutors, police officers and fellow lawyers.
I have seen prosecutors who have checked the amount of crimes with their defenders with their evidence, judges who have been open and honest with their defenders about the application of the law, and public security officers who can respect lawyers and not treat lawyers as beasts. Of course, there are many examples of the opposite. ** Reported out, encountered; I haven't reported it, but I've encountered it.
It is never the law that drives the people into despair, but the people who enforce it.
In the movie, the prosecutor played by Lei Jiayin said that he "is 40 years old, I want to be safe, I want to be on duty and become official", this is the voice of all ordinary people, is it wrong? Yes, everything right has a price, but who bears this price and why should he bear it? Fairness and justice are ideals, eating, drinking and Lazar are just needs, I don't believe in the existence of noble feelings, but I believe in human nature more. Allowing the judiciary to do the right thing cannot be at the expense of the judiciary's job. We have zero tolerance for judicial corruption, but we should tolerate differences of opinion on the application of the law.
At the end of the movie, the villager who defended himself against prosecution returned home, but his wife was sick in bed because she jumped off the building; The son who stopped the school bullying was withdrawn, but the mother was administratively detained for seven days because of accidental injury; The righteous and courageous driver was ordinary, but he died in a car accident. Is belated justice, and justice original, really the same thing? I guess the movie gives its own answer.
What should be done so that justice is not late? I guess that's the question that the movie leaves for everyone.