Zhong Yi.
The law cannot give way to the lawless" and "the law is not cold logic" ......The movie "Article 20" is continuing to go out of the circle.
Following the Supreme People's Procuratorate's two film reviews in a row, at a press conference on February 21, in response to the question "How should prosecutors implement the concept of 'handling every case with high quality and efficiency' in specific judicial cases, better respond to the expectations of the people, and maintain social fairness and justice?" The Supreme People's Procuratorate once again "named" Article 20 and responded: Fairness and justice are the soul and life of justice.
From taking real cases such as the Kunshan anti-homicide case to becoming the "strongest mouthpiece" of the procuratorate to popularize the law, the significance of "Article 20" obviously goes beyond the movie itself. The title of the film, "Article 20", refers to the provisions of Article 20 of the Criminal Law of our country on legitimate defense. The film focuses on the law and love behind this topic, and interprets the abstract law into the story around the people. "Asking for the lives of the common people, crying out for the weak", such a strong resonance is not so much a "victory of the narrative" as a "reverberation of justice".
A good precedent is better than a stack of documents. As the last line of defense to safeguard social fairness and justice, the importance of judicial fairness is self-evident. However, for quite some time, due to various factors such as the complexity of the causes of the case, the constraints of traditional concepts, and the lack of ability to collect evidence, Article 20 of the Criminal Law has not been fully applied in judicial practice, and it has been called a "sleeping clause", "the determination of justifiable defense is harsh", and "how to be considered beyond the necessary limit", and other discussions have also become the focus of topics.
In recent years, the concept of "simple fairness and justice" has been frequently mentioned in the judicial field. The so-called "simplicity" lies in the fact that it is not complicated, and "justice is at ease in the hearts of the people", that is, it conforms to the general social cognition. When it comes to legitimate defense, it means that we should not be excessively harsh on defenders with the "calmness" of "hindsight," but should prudently make comprehensive judgments with an attitude of "as if I am suing." The ideological change of the role of Han Ming, a grassroots young prosecutor, reflects this progress: at the beginning, for the behavior of Zhang Guisheng, the bus driver in the monitoring **, he was only chronologically and mechanically divided into "righteous and courageous", "mutual beating" and "intentional injury", and at the end of the film, he issued a direct defense: "The law is to make the bad guys commit crimes more expensive, not the good guys to shoot more costly." ”
In other words, in order to make fairness and justice visible, it is necessary to "handle every case with high quality and efficiency". "High quality and efficiency" not only emphasizes the fairness of case handling, but also pays attention to effect and efficiency, it is necessary to know that late justice is discounted justice, and Hao Xiuping's choice in the desperate moment in the film is thought-provoking; And "each" is embodied in every link, every detail, no matter how small the case is also related to the people's livelihood - it is not only the "Article 20" that has been "awakened", 452 articles of the Criminal Law, 56,681 words, "From beginning to end it is written in four words, fairness and justice." It is worth mentioning that whether it is the release of typical cases such as the "Chen Cang Robbery Retrial Protest Case", or the filing and withdrawal of more than 130,000 cases by the supervision and investigation organs of the national procuratorate in 2023, and the more than 7,000 protests against criminal judgments that are considered to be wrong, etc., through this press conference, it is not difficult to imagine the clear position.
Equality comes from the public, and justice comes from the way. From "Twelve Citizens" to "Article 20", when high-quality films meet high-quality and efficient justice, such a linkage has both warmth and strength.