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A County Magistrate Orders the Murder of a Judiciary Scribe

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A County Magistrate Orders the Murder of a Judiciary Scribe Section 4.16 A County Magistrate Orders the Murder of a Judiciary Scribe This complex and shocking case reveals corruption of the egregious sort, the abuse of power by a County Magistrate, a high-ranking military hero and noble, who ordered one of his own subordinates murdered in cold blood and then tried to cover up the crime. The crime was detected by the staff of the very alert Governor Yan of Huaiyang 淮陽 Commandery in his itinerant review of legal cases and incarcerated persons in the counties under his jurisdiction. This was part of the ‘recording of incarcerated persons’ (lùqiú 錄囚) judicial review pro- cess, commonly conducted by Commandery Governors during the early Han period and in a more systematic fashion by Regional Inspectors (Cishi 刺史) after 106 BCE. Governor Yan’s men had received a report that a Thief Catcher named Jia was sitting in detention, without any documentation for the detention and no follow-up investigation. The Governor likely ordered an explanation from Magistrate Xin of Xinqi 新郪 County, who had jurisdiction over Jia. In a formal report dated August 12, 201 BCE, probably written in response to this request, Jia reports from jail, writing that three days earlier he had set out on a routine mission to prepare against bandits with a Judiciary Scribe named Wu. Wu sub- sequently disappeared and never returned. Jia tried to apprehend his missing colleague, who was probably suspected of absconding. Then Jia was arrested, presumably for failing to apprehend a criminal, and detained, but he was held without charges or documentation of his detention and his jailers showed no interest in interrogating him or others involved in Wu’s disappearance. The Governor smelled something fishy in these details, and by August 31, 201 BCE, he was ready to open a reinvestigation of Wu’s disappearance. In the detailed reinvestigation, all the sordid details came out. The seed of the crime was planted two months earlier when Magistrate Xin of Xinqi was traveling outside the county seat inspecting outlying districts. He left Judiciary Scribe Wu in charge of a rainmaking ritual to end a drought. Wu presumed to employ one of Xin’s personal retainers, who was supposed to be watching over Xin’s house, to dance or sing in the ritual. When Xin returned to ques- tion Wu about this, Wu was rude and insolent. Xin reached for his sword and cursed Wu, making a move to rush at him, whereupon Wu fled. Magistrate Xin later heard from another retainer that Wu was threatening to report Xin’s outburst to Governor Yan or even to the Chief Minister in the capital. Afraid © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004300538_053 A County Magistrate Orders the Murder of a Judiciary Scribe 1289 of this possibility, Xin ordered another retainer of his named Cang, possibly a non-ethnic-Han Chieftain, to murder Wu when they were out on bandit- suppression patrol. In Cang’s statement, he confessed that he and two other men, one a Thief Catcher named Bu and another a retainer of Xin’s named Yu had murdered Judiciary Scribe Wu in the jurisdiction of a man named Bing, the same man who would later detain Thief Catcher Jia without justification. When Bing and a Bailiff of the Crossbowmen named Zhui arrested Cang, possibly killing Bu in the process, Yu escaped. Cang freely admitted that he had killed Wu on Xin’s orders. Upon hearing this, Bing and Zhui set Cang free, thus committing the capital crime of releasing a murderer. The inquiry stage of the reinvestigation revealed some interesting facts. All the men about to face sentence in this case held high ranks in the Han ranking system. These were originally conferred during the civil war period, when Liu Bang liberally handed out landless noble titles as rewards for loyalty and brav- ery. Originally, these ranks followed the old Chu ranking system of the Warring States period, but early in the Han, Liu Bang converted them all to conform to the Qin system of twenty ranks. In this case, we learn how such ranks were converted. Normally, holding such lofty ranks would save convicted criminals from mutilation and reduce their sentences in other ways, but here, the hold- ing of high rank was just a technical detail. It would probably not save any of these men from execution, but it did seem to guarantee that the Emperor would review the case before the sentences were carried out. The shared-responsibility nature of the early Han statutes inherited from the Qin basically guaranteed that everyone implicated in this case would match execution. As the actual killer, Cang would obviously face execution, and since those who conspired to commit murder faced the same sentence as the killer, Magistrate Xin received the same sentence. Constable Bing and Bailiff of the Crossbowmen Zhui, who had released Cang, aware that he had committed murder, were also sentenced to execution, since knowingly releas- ing a criminal made them liable for the same crime. The behavior of Magistrate Xin, who had conspired and ordered the mur- der of his own Judiciary Scribe, demonstrates that he was a ruthless, vio- lent man, who used methods born of the strife of the civil war years. He was surrounded by a group of personal retainers who were just as ruthless, more loyal to Xin than to the laws of the empire. Liu Bang clearly did not need this type of County Magistrate to get his newly founded Han dynasty off to the kind of start that would encourage those who still had doubts about its legitimacy to submit to its authority. Finding a way to recruit qualified men of a more civil, law-abiding bent would occupy the next five reigns of the dynasty..
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