Business owners spread rumors and slander the judge, causing millions of onlookers to be sentenced
Legal experts: mass network rights protection must be rational in accordance with the law
□ Our reporter Ding Guofeng
Dissatisfied with the court’s civil judgment, the legal representative of a company in Nantong, Jiangsu made up a post on the Internet, arbitrarily fabricating rumors to slander the judge, and forwarded it to 39 WeChat groups, and encouraged others to criticize and forward it, with the intention of discrediting the court and judges, causing 100% on the Internet. More than 10,000 people clicked and watched.
On August 27, the Nantong City Intermediate People's Court issued a second-instance sentence on defendant Zhang Weiguo's crime of provoking quarrels and upholding the criminal punishment of one-year imprisonment issued by the first-instance court.
A reporter from the Rule of Law Daily learned that the case was a typical case in which the defendant used the current bad network ecology and some netizens’ psychology of being curious and blindly following the trend by fabricating rumors to arouse the attention of netizens with the intention of influencing judicial decisions.
Report the judge's failure to judge the law
Millions of people clicked and watched
On July 28, 2020, an account with the online name "Nantong Justice Voice" posted on the well-known local Haobin forum in Nantong, entitled "Reporting Tongzhou Judge Yu Moumou for 4 days after evacuating 16.5 million funds for false litigation and ruling , Migrant Workers, etc. have suffered huge losses."
The real-name whistleblower Nantong Yuanjing Construction Engineering Co., Ltd. Zhang Weiguo stated in the report that “Yu XX sued Baoze Company provided by the whistleblower during the court trial and used the underworld to provocation, disturb the order of the unit, and threaten to interfere with judicial proceedings and should be transferred. The police turned a blind eye when handling cases." "As a judicial officer, Yu Moumou used his position to assist in the trial of serious violation of procedures. In civil trial activities, he deliberately violated facts and the law and violated the law. The circumstances are serious and his behavior has constituted a civil violation of the law. Judgment of crime" and so on.
In order to expand the influence, the whistleblower also asked friends and employees of his company to participate in top posts and comments. He also changed his online name twice and said, “There are gods three feet above their heads. In retribution, all the black judges in Nantong" "Tongzhou District Court is notoriously black, and the Director of the Executive Bureau disagrees with the President's management."
In the meantime, the web post link was forwarded to 39 WeChat groups, and netizens in the group reposted it 121 times.
As of August 7, 2020, the number of online posts has reached 1.072 million views and 256 comments have been posted.
On August 7, 2020, the public security organ placed the case on file.
On September 8, Zhang Weiguo was summoned to the case by the public security organs, defending and denying any fabricated content in the online post.
Due to the great adverse effects, the case was designated by a higher authority and handled by the judicial authority in Haimen District, Nantong City.
However, Zhang Weiguo's resentment towards the courts and judges stems from a construction project dispute with his company.
In March 2018, Yuanjing Company, as the contractor, signed a construction contract with Baoze Company (the developer), a local investment company established by Dongguan Baoyu Plastic Products Company in Nantong.
However, less than a month later, a dispute arose. Baoze Company sued the Tongzhou District Court to terminate the contract and ordered Yuanjing Company to stop construction, withdraw from the construction site and bear liquidated damages. Yuanjing Company filed a counterclaim.
In March 2019, the position of the court was adjusted, and the composition of the collegiate panel in the case was changed. At that time, the head of the Minyi Division Yu Moumou served as the presiding judge.
In December 2019, the court made a first-instance judgment, rescinding the construction contract between the two parties, ruling that Yuanjing Company should withdraw from the construction site of the project, deliver the construction materials of the completed project, and dismiss other related litigation requests.
Yuanjing Company refused to accept the judgment of the first instance and appealed to Nantong Intermediate Court.
In July 2020, the Nantong Intermediate People's Court made a second-instance judgment, dismissing the appeal and upholding the original judgment.
Fictional facts win the eye
Some netizens blindly follow suit
"I haven't read the first and second instance verdicts carefully...The court did not accept the verdict is a ruling in vain... The purpose of fictitious facts is to gain eyeballs, get the case to pay attention, and retry the case." Zhang Weiguo said in his confession.
In fact, the issue of "the judge did not transfer clues related to gangs" reflected in Zhang Weiguo's report. As early as during the trial of the civil case, the Tongzhou District Court had transferred the clues to the Anti-gang Office on May 24, 2019; after investigation, the clues did not constitute the report. Involved in crimes involving gangs, Zhang Weiguo and other informants were notified according to law and a return visit was made.
The reporter noticed that in recent years, with the rapid development of Internet technology, some seemingly only emotional entanglements and interest entanglements between individuals have spread rapidly through the Internet and quickly fermented into eye-catching public opinion events.
In this case, online buzzwords such as "judges breaking the law", "involving crime" and "migrant workers' wages", through the fictitious splicing of defendant Zhang Weiguo, instantly attracted the attention of a large number of netizens, and many netizens blindly posted bad reviews and attacks. Courts, judges and judicial system.
Some netizens replied to Zhang Weiguo's online post: "There are judges like Yu and the common people must be victims", "The judge is so dark! The huge amount of cases tilts the balance! Behind it is huge greed" and so on.
Some netizens took the opportunity to attack the judicial team.
After seeing the bad comments from netizens, Zhang Weiguo continued to attack with posts, saying: "Tongzhou court is not an ordinary black, Yu Moumou is also my presiding judge, a super black judge, the trial procedure is seriously illegal, how does this female judge rely on the upper court? Long one? Can you come out for two steps?"
But how do these netizens who blindly follow the trend know that Zhang Weiguo himself is notorious.
The Haimen District People’s Court described Zhang Weiguo in the judgment of the first instance as follows: He had committed fraud and was sentenced to eight years in prison in December 1994 and deprived of political rights for two years; he was sentenced to ten years in prison for theft in September 2004. Month, and a fine of 1,000 yuan.
After he was released from prison, Zhang Weiguo was administratively detained by the local public security organ in Nantong 4 times for obstructing his duties, gambling, driving a motor vehicle after drinking and other illegal acts from 2006 to 2017.
In the face of a series of evidence, the defendant Zhang Weiguo repeatedly refused to confess his guilt or confess his guilt, and tried to evade legal sanctions.
In the second instance, the Nantong Intermediate People's Court held that the defendant Zhang Weiguo fabricated relevant facts, fabricated false information, vented his emotions at will, and published serious inconsistencies with objective facts when his interests were not supported by a civil judgment and he had legal remedies to claim his rights. Online posts smeared the people's courts and judges, and instigated and encouraged many people to expand their coverage and cause disturbances.
Defendant Zhang Weiguo’s act of fabricating false information for dissemination in public cyberspace clearly surpassed the boundaries of legal rights protection, disrupted the normal order of judicial activities, caused serious chaos in public order, and constituted the crime of provocation and provocation.
It was then ruled to dismiss the appeal and uphold the original verdict.
The Internet is not a place outside the law
Rights should be protected rationally in accordance with the law
After the judgment of the case, a number of legal experts said in an interview with reporters that the legal treatment of this case once again shows that cyberspace is not a place outside the law. Citizens should express their demands through rational and legal channels and methods, and protect their rights and interests through legal procedures. .
"It is understandable that citizens can express their appeals, and they are also important rights granted by the law. It is normal to have different understandings and opinions on judicial decisions that have not been supported by their own interests." said Peng Xinlin, a researcher at the Institute of Criminal Law Science of Beijing Normal University, regretting However, some people vent their emotions online by fabricating false information, putting pressure on the judicial organs, disrupting the public order of cyberspace, affecting normal judicial activities, damaging judicial credibility, causing bad social effects, and ultimately acting for their own crimes. Reasonable "rights protection" paid the price.
Peng Xinlin believes that, on the one hand, it is not advisable to protect rights beyond the rule of law. It is necessary to resolutely prevent the formation of the wrong orientation of "no trouble, no solution, small trouble, small trouble, big trouble”.
On the other hand, the judiciary must adhere to a fair, clean, civilized and standardized justice, give full play to the role of the judicial function, pay attention to education and guidance, analyze the law in judicial handling, strengthen and improve the guidance of the masses to express their demands, and let the masses realize that the rule of law is the realization of their demands. The best path and the best choice.
"Using the Internet platform to evaluate judicial activities and criticize what they consider to be unreasonable is the people's supervision of judicial activities. It is understandable." said Xue Jun, a professor at Peking University Law School, but in this case, the parties fabricated Facts and misleading public opinion do not belong to the exercise of the right to report and expose, but are violations of the judicial system, judicial dignity, and judicial credibility.
Zhou Shaohua, a professor at the Law School of Guangzhou University, also believes that if the parties in the case believe that the judge has illegal issues, it is their legitimate right to report through the Internet, but it does not mean that the parties can conduct malicious hype on the Internet, nor does it mean that they can distort or even fabricate the facts. Attack and slander judges and courts.
“If the informant uses the information network to insult or intimidate judges, or tamper with or fabricate false information, spread it on the Internet, or organize or instruct personnel to spread it on the Internet, in accordance with the The use of information networks to implement defamation and other criminal cases applicable to the law on several issues may constitute the crime of provoking quarrels." Zhou Shaohua said that since the release of the judicial interpretation, many acts of defamation on the Internet have been dealt with as the crime of provoking quarrels.
Is the act of maliciously reporting the judge a "defamation" or a "picking quarrel" against the judge?
Zhou Shaohua believes that if the fictitious facts made by the whistleblower involve individual citizens, of course it is an act of "fabricating facts to slander others" and is suspected of violating the crime of defamation.
However, due to the particularity of the judge’s identity, it is difficult to separate the “fiction of the facts about the case’s trial” from the “fiction of the facts directed at the individual judges”. The duty behavior of the judge bears the value of the public affairs of justice. .
Therefore, even if the whistleblower only falsify the facts of the judge's individual actions, it will damage not only the judge's personal reputation, but also the court's reputation, which should be uniformly determined as the crime of provocation and provocation in accordance with the above-mentioned judicial interpretations.
Our newspaper Nantong (Jiangsu) August 27th