These are actually two problems.
Yesterday's article "Wu Xie Yu has subdued the law, but too many questions he left have not disappeared" talked about Wu Xieyu, Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen, who were executed on the same day on January 31.
The word "compensation" itself implies that the execution of the murderer is a "homomorphic revenge" completed by society on behalf of the victim and his relatives. And the "homomorphic revenge law" is the benchmark that almost all human civilizations refer to when they first formulate laws. That's how everybody thinks about it at first. The Code of Hammurabi in the ancient two river basins stipulates: "A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye". 
In the great uprising at the end of the Qin Dynasty in China, Han Gaozu entered the customs, reducing the harsh laws of the Qin Dynasty to only the "three chapters of the law". And the rest are: "Death to the murderer, death to the wounded, and atonement to the theft." "There was also the ancient Roman law of the Twelve Tables, which stipulated that one citizen must be compensated in equal value for the harm infringed by another. All of these oldest laws, to put it mildly, are nothing more than variants of "homomorphic revenge." Homomorphic revenge is the cornerstone of almost all ancient human laws. And according to my observation, to this day, "homomorphic revenge" is still the most recognized principle of the Chinese - in recent years, when the idea of "abolishing the death penalty" appeared in Chinese legal circles, it was questioned the most, that is, "Who should pay for the victim's life?" This kind of questioning itself proves that most Chinese believe that homomorphic revenge is the most natural. But this kind of "homomorphic revenge" that we most accept has an "Achilles heel" -If both the victim and his relatives voluntarily renounce the right to revenge, where does the legitimacy of judicial punishment come from? 
This situation is difficult to occur in China, because unlike the West that is influenced by the ** religion to talk about "forgiveness", most people in China regard revenge for their families as the highest criterion for being worthy of the other party. But this rare special case happened precisely in the Wu Xie Yu case. is like what the friends who advocated leaving Wu Xie Yu's life said: Wu's relatives have issued an understanding, so the elders want to give their family a "legacy". And if Wu's parents had a spirit in heaven, although they would feel sorry for their son's mother-killing behavior, they probably would not take the initiative to ask the judiciary to "avenge" Wu's mother, and even beg the law to spare their only son's life. So the problem of homomorphic revenge thinking was suddenly exposed. Yes, the murderer should pay for his life, but what if the killed person does not want this "compensation"? Where does the law justify heavier sentences for murderers? Yes, in extreme cases like the Wu Xie Yu case, you will find that the principle of "homomorphic revenge" that is most in line with our habitual thinking has failed. This is also the reason why modern justice has abandoned the "homomorphic revenge", the foundation of ancient social legislation. In order to find a reason for the handling of such cases, we must think a little deeper. 2
Some people say that even if an individual gives up the "right of revenge", the judiciary should maintain social order and calm down public anger by punishing criminals, which belongs to the view of the social law school.
The school of social law believes that justice is administered not only (or not primarily) to protect the rights and freedoms of individuals, but to safeguard the interests of society as a whole. This is the so-called "sociality of law". In fact, from ancient times to the present, in addition to homomorphic revenge, China's judiciary has a very "social law school" flavor. I mentioned in a previous article that the case of Wu Xie Yu's murder of his mother was a felony of "evil rebellion" among the ten evils in ancient China, and people who were sentenced to death for other crimes need to wait for the "Autumn Queen's Execution". In ancient times, the judiciary gave such a heavier punishment to children for disobedience, which was actually a kind of "socialization of the law", and it was necessary to use the tilt of the law to maintain social order. Because the ancient Chinese contract and equality principles were relatively weak, the compensatory emphasis was on the "reciprocity" principle of filial piety of the father and the son, the lord and the virtuous, and the "reciprocity" principle of repayment. In this set of principles, the greatest kindness between people is the grace of parenthood and nurturing, for this kind of kindness, if the children "will take revenge", disobey or even kill their parents, the court no longer cares, the basic principles of society will be out of order. Therefore, although the criminal justice of most dynasties in ancient China was very passive, it was only very active in the disobedience of children, and if the children insulted and beat their parents, once they were accused, they would be punished with a rod or a serious punishment. Even if the parents plead for excuses, it is useless. When I met the kind-hearted county magistrate, while playing the children's board, I would tell the old parents: "This is no longer your family's business, but it is the outline of the world." "Yes, only by maintaining these basic rules can we reduce the cost of maintaining social order as much as possible. And these "Gangchang" are the high-voltage lines of the imperial court, once you touch it, no matter if the other party governs you or not, the imperial court will not be finished with you first. To put it simply, it is to "kill chickens and set an example" for this kind of thing. In the case of Wu Xieyu, we can also see that the reason why the court sentenced him to death for immediate execution is also to follow a similar logic of "socialization of law". The verdict particularly emphasized that "Wu Xieyu's act of killing his mother seriously violated family ethics and trampled on the normal emotions of human society, the social impact was extremely bad, and the crime was extremely serious, which was not enough for a lighter punishment." That's what it means. If the reason comes to this level, the reason for sentencing Wu Xie Yu to death seems to be sufficient. But that's not all. 3
But the idea of the "social law school" seems to be perfect. But there is a fatal heel:Is it always appropriate to talk about social justice without the justice of the individual? Will there be deviations in influencing the judicial judgment of individual cases for the utilitarian purpose of "maintaining social order"?
We know that behind this idea of pursuing "social efficacy", there is a strong utilitarian nature, and strong utilitarian things are often skewed and distorted. For example, in ancient China, an interesting phenomenon was that the judiciary generally imposed extremely severe sentences on children's disobedience and harm to their parents, and slapping their parents in some dynasties may lose their heads. However, the punishment for parents' infringement of children's rights is extremely loose: drowning, abandoning infants, buying and selling children, and even "changing children and eating" in disaster years, are basically not prosecuted by the people, and arranged marriages and other behaviors are protected by law. It's the same killing, why is the gap so big? 
is also to save food, abandoning parents is a heinous felony, and Guo Jie's burial is twenty-four filial piety? Why? In the final analysis, the reason for this kind of judicial "bias" in ancient China was to reduce the cost of social governance. The political principle of Confucian culture is to replace the family with the state, the father with the king, and the filial piety with loyalty. Therefore, although the idea of "reciprocity" originally encouraged "monarchs, fathers, husbands, and courtiers" and "courtiers and wives" to do their part. However, with the gradual expansion of imperial power, the imperial court inevitably wanted to set up a judicial model of "what parents do is right, and children's disobedience is a serious crime" to educate the people and educate "them to treat the monarch with the same rebellious and obedient attitude." The impact of this "social nature of law" on our society is huge and long-lasting. Even today, it still has an impact. For example, in 2018, there was a case of mother killing her daughter in a certain place, where a mentally ill daughter verbally threatened to kill her younger brother, and her mother then strangled her to death. After the trial, the court sentenced the mother to only five years in prison. 
Another example is in 2019, a young mother born in the 90s committed suicide by jumping into the river, pulling her infant child to die together, but she didn't die, and the child died. After the trial, the court only sentenced the mother to five years in prison. ......
There are many other similar cases, which I will not list here. I don't mean to say that there is any comparison between these cases of parents killing their children and Wu Xieyu's case. I just want to point out that if we look at the benchmarks of the social law school, the general social tendencies in our country reflected in these precedents are similar - compared to seeing children hurting their parents and declaring that it is intolerable. We are often more likely to believe that "tiger poison does not eat children", accept that parents may have unspeakable distress when hurting their children, and then sympathize and forgive this behavior. So in this sense, I think that Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen, the murderers of the Chongqing children who fell from the building on the same day as Wu Xieyu, also have quite symbolic significance - it may be because the two of them have aroused public outrage in the society, so the court also adopted capital punishment for this case of biological father killing his son, which was not so common before.
However, there is also a question in this, that is, if we take "not killing is not enough to make the people angry" as an important reason for sentencing the death penalty, will we be able to achieve the perfection of legal principles and the peace of conscience? 4
In fact, this question is also worth asking.
The French thinker Rousseau emphasized in his book "The Social Contract": ".People have no right to put others to death, even if they are to set an example. 
This sentence shows that Rousseau did not approve of all death penalty precedents on the grounds that "the social impact is extremely bad". But it must be noted that after this sentence, Rousseau added the phrase "unless it is those who will do evil as long as they live." In fact, if you read through The Social Contract, you will see that Rousseau was in favor of the death penalty for murderers. According to Rousseau, the essence of law is a contract that people make in order to live well and maintain public order. And when a person commits a crime, especially by illegally depriving another person of his life, he betrays the contract and becomes a "traitor to the whole society". If you infringe on the property freedom of others, the society can also deny your property freedom, and if you deprive others of their right to life, your right to life no longer needs to be respected by society. This is where the legitimacy of judicial punishment for offenders, including the death penalty, lies** – although the result of the punishment looks like "homomorphic revenge", the punishment based on the "social contract theory" has a stronger reason. It also avoids the difficult question of "where does the legitimacy of justice come from if the victim gives up the right to revenge". But the tricky thing is that it is precisely the "social contract theory" that makes the case against the death penalty come into being. In 1764, the Italian criminal scientist Cesare Beccaria published hisOn Crime and Punishment. 
This book is so well-known that it is now a required reading in university law schools, and a few years ago I heard that it was ...... in addition to the addendumLaw students who have not read it should consciously face the wall, Beccaria puts forward a number of reasons why the death penalty is illegal in the book:
1. Beccaria believes that since the ** of the law is a "social contract" in which individuals voluntarily transfer their rights, thenNo one would be willing to give up the right to life when signing this paper contract, so the public power did not actually get the "contractual right" to execute the individual in the first place。2. Beccaria said that the death penalty is a short and intense punishment, and that the punitive effect of justice should be pursued to be lasting. Therefore, he advocated that the death penalty should be replaced by hard labor for life, so that prisoners should suffer longer and set an example. (In this way, it seems that Beccaria is not old and kind). 
3. Beccaria argues that the death penalty is a public performance, and in this performance, the state plays a strong, cruel role, while the condemned are weak. Such a death penalty would arouse public sympathy for the prisoner. 4. The death penalty will make the whole society more brutal, the state opposes the individual, but the death penalty is the public power against the individual, and the existence of the death penalty will make the public feel that as long as the reason is appropriate, killing is reasonable. It should be said that as the initiator of the abolition theory, Beccaria talked about all the reasons for the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolitionists of later generations actually talked about these reasons. However, if you analyze it carefully, you will find that these four reasons are actually problematic: first, except for the first reason, the last three reasons are all about whether it is necessary to carry out the death penalty from the perspective of the social benefits of punishment, which is actually the same as the thinking of the later social law school. And as we have analyzed above, it is easy to distort the law by talking about social benefits beyond individual justice—will the death penalty necessarily make the public sympathize with the prisoner? Does a properly justified death penalty that propagate restraint necessarily lead to a brutal social climate? It's really all a matter of debate. The death penalty has no punitive effect on crimes, and it is even more difficult to say that it cannot be used as an example – as Rousseau said, the purpose of the death penalty should never be "to set an example", but to achieve justice. What is really worth going deep into** is actually only the first one:When people reached a social contract and built a state, did they sign and cede the right to life together? Actually, I think there is. It is precisely because we have signed and ceded the right to life to society that the public power of society has the obligation to guarantee the right to life of every citizen. This is the same as when you go to the bank to make a deposit, the bank has the obligation to ensure the safety of the money only when you hand it over to the bank. If individuals do not sign out their right to life, then what obligation does society have to protect everyone's life? Rights and responsibilities are always reciprocal, and since we have enjoyed the guaranteed benefits of the right to life provided by the "social contract", we need to bear the consequences of being deemed to have given up our own rights of the same kind when the right to life of others is violated. Therefore, Beccaria's argument based on the "Social Contract Theory" actually illustrates the necessity of the death penalty - it is the opposite of the social guarantee of individual life, like two sides of the same coin. When one side disappears, the other dies immediately. Writing this, I think my opinion on whether Wu Xie Yu should die or not has been clear:He deserves to be sentenced to death. However, the reason is not the classical principle of homomorphic revenge (in this very particular case, the right to revenge has been waived by the victim and his relatives); Nor is it the "socialization of law" endorsed by the social law school of "extremely bad social influence" (at no time should we kill people to "set an example"); Rather, Wu Xie Yu is a violator of our "social contract". A person who violates the contract shall not enjoy the corresponding rights conferred by the contract. Wu Xie Yu and his mother's right to life are guaranteed by the social contract, and the former maliciously tramples on the latter's rights, so they must pay the corresponding price. It has nothing to do with what exactly is the relationship between him and the victim. It has nothing to do with whether the victim and his relatives are willing to give up their right to revenge. It has nothing to do with the social impact of the case, or what social effect can be produced by whether to kill or not. It only has to do with the extent to which the individual is violating the contract he is expected to abide by. A contract is a contract, it's as simple as that. 
At the end of the article, I would like to mention one more question - the Beccaria mentioned above, in his later years, thought of a fifth reason for his abolitionist theory: the truth is difficult to reduce, and justice often cannot achieve absolute justice. And the death penalty is irreversible, once the head falls to the ground and a wrongful conviction is discovered, how can you remedy it? This is really a valid argument - although it is only in favor of the killing, not the abolition. As for the Wu Xie Yu case, it seems that there is really some application of this reason. So far, although the circumstances of Wu Xieyu's murder of his mother have been basically clear, the motive of why he killed his mother seems to have not been fully explained by Wu Xie Yu after the case. I saw that some analysts said that this may be Wu Xie Yu deliberately left blank in order to leave doubts so that the judiciary can spare his life. If this speculation is true, then Wu is really an extremely scheming person and has a strong desire to survive. The same situation also appeared between Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen, who once tried to save themselves from death by passing the blame to each other for the mastermind. - Of course, these tricks did not save the lives of these criminals in the end. However, the prostrations of these damned people do not necessarily prove the correctness of the death penalty. The full text of this article is 5000 words, thank you for reading. It's not easy to try a new one.,Like it, please give a three-in-a-row.,Thank you.。