Caixin’s Dedicated Web Page To Li Zhuang Case

For China rights and law followers you may find this of interest

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China Law Lis reports

Chinese Caixin has a dedicated ?? web page for the Li Zhuang case titled ??????, which contains quite a few articles that may be of interest: http://policy.caing.com/2011/zslzhuang/index.html

Also here’s the latest on his release… via China Lis Law


(Beijing) ? Prosecutors in Chongqing withdrew additional charges against Li Zhuang, a Beijing-based former lawyer serving an 18-month jail term for coercing false testimony.

The decision ends the latest legal episode of a drama that has engrossed the attention of both the public and the country’s legal circles since early 2010, in which many academics and lawyers criticized the court proceedings of Li Zhuang’s charges. Li represented an alleged gang boss during a crackdown on organized crime in Chongqing, located in southwestern China, and was convicted of asking his client to give false testimony.

Prosecutors in Chongqing filed a suit against Li Zhuang a year after he started his jail term. State-run Chongqing media revealed that the new allegations were based on a collection of leads in Chongqing, Shanghai, Liaoning and Sichuan, where Li’s former clients had made claims of fraud against him. Li was eventually charged with incitement to falsify evidence.

The decision to drop the allegation was due to insufficient evidence, according to a local paper. “Li’s defense presented new evidence that was inconsistent with evidence gathered by the prosecutors,” said the state-run Hualong net.

Li’s new trial opened April 19 in Chongqing, less than two months before his jail term was set to conclude. He was represented by Yang Xuelin, from Beijing-based Sinotrust and Si Weijiang, from Shanghai-based Debund Law Offices.

Some of the country’s most renowned legal scholars formed a consultation team for the defendant, including Jia Ping, former president of China University of Political Science and Law, Zhang Sizhi, the lawyer who defended Mao Zedong’s wife after the Cultural Revolution and He Weifang, a professor at Peking University and an advocate for reform of China’s judicial system.

In addition, one of the lawyers that represented Li a year ago, Chen Youxi, broadcasted the trial through China’s most popular social network, Sina weibo. ?????

In the new trial, Li’s lawyers challenged the validity of evidence, jurisdiction of the venue and due process procedures. Prosecutors had said at the start of the trial that the evidence was sufficient and beyond reasonable doubt. The court accepted written testimonies from witnesses, and said witnesses did not arrive because “court notices failed to reach the witnesses and the rest of witnesses were either unwilling or unable to testify on trial.”

Sources told Caixin that the other lawyer who worked with Li in 2010 didn’t attend the trial because the law firm, where Li was previously employed, is now “under criminal investigation.”