Application Denied!

Intentional Homicide?

Excessive self-defense? Negligent homicide!?

Everyone present nodded faintly, but their hearts sank. Their brows furrowed, and for a long time, no one spoke.

Xu De, at the Defendant's Bench, was no more at ease.

Before the trial, he had prepared two approaches.

First, he could refute every argument the other side raised in court and change the defendant Wang Qiang's fate from guilty to innocent!

But this was a courtroom.

No one could claim a hundred percent chance of winning!

So he had prepared a second approach.

Second... he had the letter of forgiveness and settlement agreement.

Those documents could reduce the defendant's sentence to some extent, so that if an acquittal proved impossible, he would not walk away empty-handed.

So why did Xu De think he might lose and need that fallback?

The reason was...

"Intentional injury, excessive self-defense resulting in negligent homicide..."

At the Defendant's Bench,

Xu De drew a deep breath. His brows tightened, and unprecedented gravity entered his eyes.

The prosecution had changed its charges from Intentional Homicide to the two now before the court.

For him, that was not good news.

Why?

Because charges needed evidence and legal grounds to hold up.

If Intentional Homicide was a skyscraper and excessive self-defense a single-story house, then the prosecution's evidence was a foundation five feet deep.

It could not support a skyscraper.

But it could support a single-story house with room to spare!

And his goal was to keep any building from going up on this courtroom's ground!

Tricky... very tricky.

At the judges' bench,

"Very well."

Zhang Bingxin nodded and withdrew his gaze.

This hearing chiefly concerned the criminal case, so he did not intend to let Chen Wei, who represented the civil claim, speak before the criminal matters had been examined.

Presiding judge Zhang Bingxin turned toward Xu De at the Defendant's Bench and asked,

"Defense, do you object to the prosecution's charges?"

His words fell.

Every gaze in the courtroom converged on Xu De.

Then,

Xu De drew a deep breath and said gravely,

"Your Honor, we... object!"

After speaking,

He paused, then pulled a piece of evidence from the documents on his desk.

"Your Honor, the defense submits this evidence: the weapon used in the killing."

With that, he handed it to the court clerk.

The clerk was evidently used to his habit of using the other side's evidence.

After a brief check, the clerk passed it to the judges. The three judges looked down and saw a photograph of a curved blade printed on the page.

"This is a sickle. A wheat-cutting sickle with an extremely sharp blade."

"And it clearly did not belong to the defendant, Wang Qiang!"

Xu De rose to his feet.

From his first words, he had distanced Wang Qiang from ownership of the weapon.

In a criminal case, three questions were crucial: whose weapon it was, how it appeared, and how it caused a death. If he could separate Wang Qiang from the weapon, he would make enormous progress toward winning the case!

"Your Honor, according to this forensic laboratory report, three people's fingerprints were found on the weapon."

"First, Li Erniu's. Second, Wang Qiang's. And third... those of Li Chunhua, a resident of Li Family Village!"

"Li Chunhua owned the weapon. During the standoff between the police and the villagers, he stood in the crowd holding the sickle."

"How, then, did the sickle pass from Li Chunhua's hands to Li Erniu's, only for Li Erniu to end up disemboweled by it?"

"The answer lies in what happened at the scene."

"When the defendant Wang Qiang exercised his right to defend himself, he enraged the deceased, Li Erniu."

"Li Erniu, agitated and furious, then snatched the sickle from Li Chunhua, intending to harm the defendant!"

Suddenly,

Xu De's gaze sharpened, and his voice took on an edge to match.

"At that point, the defendant had no choice but to defend himself!"

"What followed was exactly as we stated at the first hearing: the defendant disappeared into the crush of people, and when he was next seen, the victim Li Erniu was already dead!!!"

"Your Honor, members of the bench,"

"Wang Qiang's actions fell entirely within Article 20 of the Criminal Law: lawful self-defense. We ask the court to dismiss the prosecution's charges and find the defendant not guilty!"

Xu De's argument was clear and tightly reasoned.

In just a few sentences, he had laid out the events so plainly that even listeners who had never read the case file could picture the entire sequence.

In the gallery, hundreds of listeners nodded thoughtfully.

At the judges' bench, Judge Sun Dong nodded too and murmured,

"That does match the testimony of the seven police officers."

Sun Dong could not help feeling impressed.

In a few sentences, he tied together his claim, argument, evidence, and corroboration... Tch. Even the lawyers from Yanjing would be hard-pressed to do better!

Zhang Bingxin nodded, though his face betrayed nothing.

He turned toward the Prosecution Bench.

The three prosecutors there showed no anger. They looked composed and relaxed.

"Prosecution, do you object to the defense's account?"

Prosecutor Hu Guang nodded. He turned toward the Defendant's Bench and met Xu De's eyes. After a moment, he spoke.

"Your Honor, members of the bench,"

"What we wish to point out is..."

He paused,

Then raised a detail so precise it made brows furrow.

"Wang Qiang's excessive self-defense did not occur when he fought back against a man holding a blade. It occurred when..."

"Li Erniu first got into the police vehicle, and Wang Qiang acted to defend himself!"

The words fell.

Beside him, Wang Wei immediately stood and handed over several documents, then said,

"This is the police autopsy report."

"It clearly states that the deceased, Li Erniu, had a deep bite wound on the back of his hand!"

A bite wound?

Zhang Bingxin paused. Frowning, he held the document and fell into thought.

What did a bite wound have to do with this case!?

"Your Honor, according to the testimony of officers who were inside the vehicle,"

"When Li Erniu showed his intent to forcibly take Wang Mei away and harm her, the defendant Wang Qiang did not immediately push him out of the vehicle. He did something else first."

"He bit him!"

As Wang Wei spoke, his heavy build looked imposing rather than comical, and his expression was solemn.

"The defendant sank his teeth into Li Erniu, causing him pain!"

"And what happened next is the crucial point."

"Because of the pain, Li Erniu let go..."

As he spoke,

He submitted the officers' statements as well.

They clearly recorded that Wang Qiang's bite had made Li Erniu release his grip. A shove alone would have been unlikely to do it.

But a sharp pain could make a person's muscles contract involuntarily!

And because Li Erniu let go...

"At that moment, his assault had stopped. He made no further move to harm anyone, and at least four police officers were beside him, ready to restrain him on the spot!"

Wang Wei's expression was stern, his voice grave.

"Yet under those circumstances, the defendant Wang Qiang attacked first, taking the initiative to push Li Erniu out of the vehicle!"

"In sum, there was a better way to handle the situation, and the deceased had shown no intent to attack again..."

"Yet Wang Qiang chose to strike first."

Lawful self-defense had a defining limit: the force used in response had to be proportionate to the threat, and one could not pursue an attacker once that threat had ended.

Li Erniu had let go after being bitten.

Objectively, the threat had paused, and the police could have restrained him. By acting again, Wang Qiang had exceeded the bounds of self-defense.

From that perspective... both the degree of force and the timing of his response pushed against the limits of lawful self-defense.

"This..."

In the gallery, brows furrowed and uncertainty showed in people's eyes.

The audience began to stir, and murmurs of discussion gradually rose.

Among them,

"This could go either way..."

Seated in the gallery, Wang Chao stroked his chin and looked toward the bench, deep in thought.

He had not read the case file or seen what happened, but if the prosecution's account was true... lawful self-defense might not apply after all.

Even if what happened in the vehicle was lawful, there were bound to be other actions that could be called excessive.

After all, Wang Qiang's emotions had been running too high at the time. Viewed objectively, his actions could easily look "deliberate," giving the prosecution grounds to challenge any move he had made.

Would they have to use the sentencing evidence they'd prepared already? Wang Chao wondered.

Abandoning the plea of not guilty might be a sound choice now.

It would leave them enough energy to use the evidence to reduce Wang Qiang's sentence. At the very least, they could cut their losses.

"Let's see what happens next," Lin Yue whispered.

But...

"Furthermore..."

At the Prosecution Bench,

Wang Wei was about to continue, but before he could get the words out,

The next second,

An angry voice cut straight across the proceedings.

"Absurd! That's absurd!"

"Under both legal precedent and practical experience, these were not two separate acts. They were one continuous act of defense!"

"The prosecutor just ignored the fact that the immediate danger persisted throughout those three seconds. His argument is divorced from reality and tears apart a continuous sequence of events!"

Xu De had suddenly spoken from the defense side, his voice full of anger and his eyes fixed on Wang Wei.

His words fired like a machine gun, but each one cut like a knife!

At that,

Wang Chao and Lin Yue raised their brows slightly in the gallery.

He wasn't giving up? He was still fighting for an acquittal?

Exactly.

Xu De's thoughts were perfectly clear. He did not even need to pause; the rebuttal formed in his mind at once.

A plea of not guilty...

He was sticking with it!

"Slander! That's slander!"

"Observe courtroom procedure. We haven't finished our statement."

At the Prosecution Bench, Wang Wei came to his senses, seething with anger that he struggled to contain.

He had not finished speaking, and that was not what he had meant at all. He said sharply,

"Defense, you're taking my words out of context!"

But Xu De had no intention of engaging with him.

"Your Honor,"

Xu De ignored Wang Wei's furious glare and turned to presiding judge Zhang Bingxin.

"The prosecution's account is exaggerated, based on personal conjecture rather than objective information, and wholly at odds with the facts!"

"For those reasons, the defense moves..."

"To dismiss every charge the prosecution has brought against the defendant, Wang Qiang!"

In an instant, the two sides seemed poised to clash head-on.

An electric tension filled the First Courtroom, setting pulses racing and blood pounding.