Chapter 79: Charging at the Red Line! |
The judicial system does not recognize this reason.
Lin Yue opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
She fell silent.
It was true.
The judicial system did not recognize this reason.
The law only recognized evidence—objective, tangible evidence. These "real-world experiences" and "possibilities," even if everyone secretly knew them to be facts, even if they were one hundred percent certain Liu Jingqi was at least seventeen years old...
The court would still try her as a sixteen-year-old.
This was not a matter of inflexibility or sheer stubbornness.
On the contrary, the judicial system understood all too well that if such a baseline law showed even the slightest crack, it would trigger massive social upheaval. Therefore, they would defend this red line to the death.
"Does that mean we just need evidence?"
Wang Chao, who had been standing to the side listening to their rapid-fire exchange, stroked his chin and automatically filtered for keywords.
Since...
Without evidence, the judicial system wouldn't acknowledge it. Conversely, if they had evidence, couldn't her age be changed?!
That was indeed the case.
"If you can find objective, irrefutable evidence of Liu Jingqi's real birth certificate, her biological parents, and so on..."
Huang Shi smiled faintly. "Then the age registered at the orphanage will naturally be voided."
In theory, an orphan possessed two identities.
The first was as a missing person, which was their original identity. Until their death was confirmed, the police would not cancel that identity.
Therefore, theoretically, the original identity remained "alive."
The second involved human traffickers!
Whether a trafficker sold the orphan to someone else as a child or a slave, or registered them at an orphanage, a second, legal set of identity information could be obtained.
One person, two identities. Within the legal system, they were considered two different people.
And if you laid both identities out in the open, the law absolutely would not allow one to live under two identities simultaneously.
Thus, as long as there was sufficient information to prove the original identity was correct... the "false" second identity would naturally be deleted.
It sounded simple, right?
But then came the problem...
"You won't find it."
Huang Shi wore an indifferent smile. His tone was steady, as if he were discussing something completely ordinary.
"This objective evidence... you won't find it."
"How could that be?"
Wang Chao blurted out instinctively, "The police..."
"..."
He paused mid-sentence, swallowing the rest of his words.
It was true.
They couldn't find it.
The reality was that the origins of children in orphanages were incredibly vague. They were total blank slates!
Even cracking a human trafficking case was easier than finding the parents of a typical orphan. Trafficking left criminal clues, and following those clues would eventually lead somewhere.
But an infant abandoned at the gates of an orphanage... that truly left absolutely no information behind.
"But... this is a murder case. They have to keep investigating, right?"
Wang Chao was reluctant to accept it.
However, Huang Shi looked at Xu De and countered with a question, "In your last case, how long did it take your client to find his daughter?"
Xu De's previous case was the Lijia Village incident, where the daughter of the defendant, Wang Qiang, had been abducted, and the buyer was killed during the rescue operation.
Without waiting for an answer, Huang Shi tossed out a number.
"Ten years!"
"A full ten years! And that was only because the Greenwood City police accidentally caught the trafficker. Only then did they find the child after a decade!"
"If not for that accident..."
"..."
"Do you believe that even if you gave Wang Qiang another ten years, he still wouldn't have found Wang Mei!?"
Upon hearing this, everyone fell dead silent.
And Huang Shi...
He continued speaking.
A self-deprecating smile played on Huang Shi's lips—whether he was mocking himself or someone else was unclear.
He went on, "Even if the police started looking right now, and say they really did find them after ten years."
"During that time, you couldn't possibly keep Liu Jingqi in custody indefinitely, right? And you certainly couldn't delay sentencing for ten years!"
"If the case is already settled, is there any reason to keep searching? After all, it's just a suspicion. If you chase a suspicion without probable cause, that's an invasion of privacy!"
"Even setting all that aside."
It was as if Huang Shi were venting his inner frustrations.
He dumped out words that had been bottled up for a month, perhaps even years.
Even Prosecutors Wang Mang and Zhang Qing merely sat to the side, listening in silence.
"Let's just talk about the cost."
Huang Shi raised another highly absurd and discordant...
Yet incredibly realistic issue!
"Let's do the math."
"How much do you think it would cost to search for Liu Jingqi's biological parents over an assumed span of ten years?"
Investigating a local trafficking case typically required a criminal investigation squad—usually up to five people.
But for a cross-city or cross-provincial case, deploying an entire squadron of fifteen people was perfectly normal.
Fifteen people. Assuming a total monthly salary of fifteen thousand, that's a hundred and eighty thousand a year. Over ten years, that's 1.8 million!
And that was just base salary, nothing else.
When you're out on duty, food and lodging have to be reimbursed, right?
When you go out to investigate, you have to request operational funds, right?
When you travel for a case, you need to requisition at least two police cars, right?
All of this required money!
"I know it sounds heartless, devoid of morals and justice, and it might even make you think all law enforcement officers are cold-blooded animals, but..."
"You're asking the government to dump all that money into a trafficking case... no, onto an orphan who is 'suspected' of being an adult..."
"..."
A trace of bitterness seeped into Huang Shi's tone.
"It's not realistic... it's highly unrealistic."
And that 1.8 million was calculated based on the 2002 standard of a one-thousand-yuan monthly salary per person.
Currently, police forces nationwide were stretched thin. Take forensic doctors, for example—in some remote and rugged areas, an entire county-level city might not even have one. They were rarer than giant pandas...
Where would they find the money and manpower to revolve entirely around one orphan? Let alone when there was no objective evidence proving she was an adult!
With those resources, wouldn't it be more cost-effective to invest them in other cases? Wouldn't the return on investment be higher!?
"Perhaps as society develops in the future, there will be a way to resolve this issue."
"But at least for now..."
Huang Shi took a deep drag of his cigarette, inhaling until it burned down to the filter.
"This case will be judged with her as a sixteen-year-old minor."
"The police will not help you find evidence."
"They have no reason to, nor do they have the budget."
"And the prosecutor's office definitely won't let a double homicide case drag on for ten years."
His voice echoed through the lobby of the Intermediate Court.
Lin Yue and Wang Chao opened their mouths, but ultimately remained silent.
Having tested into prestigious universities, they naturally weren't fools, nor were they purely idealistic moral crusaders.
To give an example.
If the government currently had a hundred million, and they announced that this money would go entirely toward building loving shelters for stray cats and dogs, while the budget approved for criminal murder cases was ten thousand.
What would you think?
Would you think the government was incredibly noble, an absolute model, the most democratic and free nation in the world for valuing the lives of stray animals so highly!?
No.
A normal person would only think the one who proposed it was a moron.
And that the people who passed the decision were a bunch of morons.
Even if you wanted to embezzle money, using that excuse would make you a monumental moron.
Obviously, there weren't enough morons in Dongguo to influence a city's police force into making such a move.
"If you really can't let it go..."
With that...
Huang Shi lit another cigarette for himself, and while he was at it, lit the one in Xu De's hand.
He still didn't offer one to Wang Chao, who had been waiting for quite a while.
Huang Shi stood up, getting ready to leave.
Prosecutors, judges, and detectives were essentially brothers in suffering when it came to the mental toll.
Fragile hearts... no, let's not even talk about fragile hearts.
Even if your mental resilience was higher than the average person's, you would still feel immense pain and torment when entering this field.
Huang Shi considered his own stress tolerance to be strong.
After all, Xu De had completely blindsided him in court, yet he was still willing to chat with him about the case, letting bygones be bygones.
But even so, this case from No. 18 Middle School had kept him tossing and turning, unable to sleep for nights on end, sitting on the edge of his bed chain-smoking.
Reality... was sometimes bone-chillingly cold.
You had to face it.
And you had to accept it.
"You guys can try to fight for more civil compensation."
"The defendant's family is quite wealthy."
Huang Shi turned to lead his people away.
He hadn't taken two steps before a voice from behind made him halt in his tracks.
"I need a certain level of clearance."
Huang Shi paused. He turned his head, frowning as he looked at Xu De, who had stood up.
Xu De looked back at him, his face expressionless. "I need clearance."
Huang Shi asked, "You want to overturn her age?"
"The prosecution and the police have already investigated; this simply..."
Before he could finish, Xu De cut him off.
"How will we know if we don't try?"
Xu De stated, frankly admitting that his goal was to investigate.
"Prosecutor Huang, you should know what sits at the very top of a lawyer's professional ethics, right?"
Was a lawyer's professional ethic justice?
No, justice was the judge's job. Furthermore, before a trial, no one knew the absolute truth of a case, nor who was right and who was wrong.
Therefore, a lawyer's first principle was...
"The client's interests above all else!"
Xu De declared, not mincing words.
A lawyer's core principle revolved around the client, fighting for their interests within the bounds of the law.
Of course, this principle was often used by countless unscrupulous lawyers as a death-exemption gold medallion, a shield to justify their own illegal and unethical behavior.
Fortunately, Xu De was not unscrupulous; just as his name implied, he was a man of virtue!
"My client in this case needs an answer. He explicitly told me he doesn't want money."
"Therefore, I must make his demands my objective."
"I can't downgrade the goal just because it's difficult, taking it upon myself to pivot to a civil suit for compensation!"
"So..."
"I need a certain level of clearance."
"At the very least, while my side conducts an independent investigation, the prosecution can provide appropriate cooperation."
Huang Shi frowned, staring intently at him.
Xu De showed no emotion, as if they were merely engaging in idle chatter.
His goal was clear: to get the other party to acknowledge that his investigation into Liu Jingqi was legal and relevant to the case. If any "boundary-crossing" behavior occurred, Huang Shi would be responsible for communicating it.
It couldn't be helped.
In a criminal public prosecution, even though both sides were technically on the same team...
In the criminal domain, the prosecution's authority and legal standing were vastly superior to his own!
It was just like during the trial—he had to force Huang Shi to admit that his ambush evidence was valid and legal. If he had said it himself, even using the exact same words, the effect would have been severely diminished.
By the same token, certain aspects would be extremely difficult for him to investigate alone.
But if Huang Shi verbally agreed and was willing to cooperate to a certain extent... that was an entirely different story.
"Are you serious?"
Huang Shi furrowed his brows, asking again to confirm.
"We will cover our own expenses. Any merit goes to the prosecution; if we fail, you won't be implicated."
Xu De completely disregarded pleasantries and laid everything out on the table.
"I just want to fulfill the demand!"
The demand...
A lawyer didn't need merit; merit was useless to him. All he needed was to fulfill the client's request!
When the time came, countless people would naturally wave their cash to pay for his efforts.
And Huang Shi...
No, place any prosecutor here, and they would all realize that if Xu De actually pulled this off, it would be a monumental achievement for them!
Why?
Because a prosecutor's track record was the trial itself!
Losing meant taking the fall; winning meant passing the evaluation.
And in a case involving two deaths, exposing the identity of a defendant who was "masquerading as a minor to evade justice"... achieving a perfect verdict...
This was an ironclad victory!
Not to mention, they didn't even need to approve any funding.
Anyone would be tempted. Furthermore, the prosecution also pitied Yang Huan; these two emotions were not in conflict.
Huang Shi stared at Xu De for a long time, trying to discern his true motives.
Finally, he exhaled a breath of stale air.
"Alright, I'll give you a chance."
"You submit the report, and I'll sign off on it."
Huang Shi's tone was decisive.
Having received verbal authorization, Xu De nodded.
Without hesitation, he turned and walked away...
Heading straight in the direction of the Detention Center!
Huang Shi stared fixedly at his retreating back, his mind filled with Hu Guang's past evaluation of the man.
"Fighting the minor protection laws to the bitter end..."
He murmured under his breath, his breathing growing slightly heavier.
Other lawyers would probably turn and run at the mere sight of those words.
Yet this guy was stubbornly preparing to fight to the death...
Was it the fearlessness of the ignorant, youthful arrogance? Or did he truly possess the ability and confidence?
Just as Huang Shi was marveling internally...
In a trance...
He saw Wang Chao, who had already turned to leave, suddenly pause as if remembering something. He hastily jogged back into the lobby and stood in front of Huang Shi.
Huang Shi was taken aback. He looked at him and blurted out, "You... still need something?"
Wang Chao declared, "You're disrespecting me!"
He was somewhat displeased and had decided to clear the air.
Huang Shi: ?
Huang Shi was even more bewildered. "How am I disrespecting you?"
Wang Chao's face grew increasingly disgruntled. "You passed out cigarettes but didn't offer one to me."
Who hands out cigarettes but only offers one to a single person?
Huang Shi fell silent. Then, he pulled out his cigarette case, extracted a cigarette, and placed it in Wang Chao's mouth.
"Is this respectful now?" he asked tentatively.
Wang Chao didn't speak. Clamping the cigarette between his lips, he gave a thumbs-up with his right hand, then repeatedly pressed his thumb down.
Huang Shi understood. He pulled out his lighter and lit it for him.
"Click~!"
"Puff~"
Wang Chao took a drag, instantly feeling refreshed.
"Do I respect you now?" Huang Shi asked.
Wang Chao still didn't speak. He simply reached out and pointed into the distance at Lin Yue, who was following behind Xu De.
"You're disrespecting her!"
"I have to offer one to the girl too!?"
Huang Shi looked at the young woman, his face full of astonishment.
Wang Chao reached out and shook his hand impatiently.
Huang Shi hesitated, but ultimately handed a cigarette over. After a moment's thought, he handed the lighter over as well.
This time, Wang Chao was very satisfied.
However...
A second later, Wang Chao shoved both the lighter and the cigarette back into his hands.
"Lawyer Lin doesn't smoke."
Huang Shi: ?
"Why make him offer one if she doesn't smoke?" Prosecutor Zhang Qing, standing to the side, couldn't help but ask.
Wang Chao replied, "Offering a cigarette is about attitude; it has nothing to do with whether they smoke or not!"
"I didn't bring any cigarettes this time. I'll make it up to you guys next time."
With that said, Wang Chao finally walked away fully satisfied, jogging a few steps to catch up with Xu De.
The three men stared at his retreating figure, their lips twitching for a long time.
Finally, they spat out two words.
"How particular."