First of all, the purpose of executing the death penalty is to punish evil and promote good, to deter potential criminals who are ready to go to extremes, and to give spiritual relief to the law-abiding and kind public. When you face any difficulties in life and despair about the future, don't hurt others, or the law will give you the severest punishment.
Secondly, the law will not spare any villain, but it will not kill an innocent person at will. And killing an innocent person for nothing, the bad consequences are far better than letting a villain go.
Whether old Rong Zhi is a vicious villain who should be sentenced to death or an innocent person who is really threatened can only be marked with a question mark before the final judgment. Even if it has been convicted in the minds of ordinary people, I hope it cannot be implemented as soon as possible. But now old Rong Zhi is just a suspect, not a convicted murderer. She still enjoys the right to appeal and the right to exonerate herself, which no one can deprive.
2021119, the old family members revealed to the media that the lawyer and Zhao will be entrusted as defenders in the second trial, and Chen Tonghua, a legal aid lawyer in the first trial, will no longer serve as a defender transplant. The new defense lawyer has met with the old Rong Zhi himself, and his preliminary defense opinion is consistent with the first trial. He still admitted some facts such as robbery, denied participating in the murder, and insisted that he was coerced by France and Britain and should not be sentenced to death.
Old Rong Zhi's first-instance judgment has been published on the Internet, with nearly 40,000 words. It gives a detailed account of all the crimes committed by Rong Zhi, and also lists a series of witness statements and judicial expertise conclusions. Generally speaking, there is no big problem in the reasoning of the whole case. But the biggest problem with the first-instance judgment lies in "reasoning" itself. In other words, the part of Rong Zhi's participation in the murder was basically completed by reasoning, and there was no particularly favorable empirical evidence to form a closed loop of the evidence chain.
This is not because there are loopholes in the work of the judicial department. The biggest reason is that old Rong Zhi fled for more than 20 years, and now the method of being caught in those years bears almost all the blame and denies all the participation of old Rong Zhi. The murder weapon, fingerprints and biological traces on the bodies extracted from the four crime scenes basically point to France and Britain. In other words, there is only one way for the direct murderer to kill, and there are no survivors in the vicious killing, resulting in no direct witnesses in the specific killing process.
Survivor Liu and his wife can only provide testimony that they have always participated in the kidnapping and cooperated with him to extort huge amounts of money from miles away. Whether Lao has a strong motive for killing can only be inferred from the subjective feelings of the Liu couple, which is a weak witness testimony.
Most importantly, from the perspective of a professional legal person, Liu's unfavorable accusation against Lao has a strong subjective tendency. Because Liu Qu met the old lady Zuo Tai, and after being seduced, she was kidnapped and threatened by France and Britain. Old Rong Zhi went to the dock to meet his wife and let them go at her request.
And Liu's courtship is the root of the two people's troubles, which is a shame and a loss of money. Therefore, from Liu's point of view, it is natural to hate old people. In the end, France and Britain let the couple live, but their testimony can only prove two things: the perpetrator was France and Britain, and the old Rong Zhi was a participant. In the end, he only made money and didn't die.
To put it bluntly, if there are no survivors, all the empirical evidence points to France and Britain. Those who are alive can't prove that old Rong Zhi killed anyone.
If we can capture France and Britain together 20 years ago, through trial and strict evidence collection, we can find favorable clues with great probability and use this as a breakthrough to debunk old lies.
However, after 20 years' trial, all the scenes can't be restored, and France and Britain also bear all the blame for old Rong Zhi. Therefore, when the public prosecutor refutes the defense of old Rong Zhi, he can only prove that old Rong Zhi and France and Britain are murderers, not coerced accomplices, through the contradiction between logical reasoning and testimony. However, this kind of reasoning based on weak evidence (witness testimony, interrogation confession) lacks the support of substantive evidence, and cannot completely prove that old Rong Zhi is not an accomplice under duress.