Death Sentences Can Be Waived?!

At the Prosecution Bench, Chen Wei gasped for breath, his face grim. His heart hammered so hard it felt ready to burst from his chest and leap into his throat.

After those words, Chen Wei fixed Li Li with a dark stare.

He had known there was a witness, but he had never expected Xu De to call her under those circumstances.

Still less had he expected one "maybe" and one "I don't know" from Li Li to settle the nature of the case so easily!

And now that the case had been framed this way, what would happen to Chen Wei?

Would he get chewed out?

No. He would, of course, but he did not care about that.

Why?

Because in legal circles, aside from prosecutors, nobody cared whether you were an ambulance chaser, what your reputation was, or how dirty your tactics were. Clients only cared whether you could win!

As long as you won, you would never run out of cases, even if everyone despised you.

But if you lost? You fell straight to the bottom, left to scrape by on consultations. And consultations were not about ability. They were mostly about reputation. Once yours stank, even that work dried up...

"The plaintiff requests that this witness be excluded from this case!"

Chen Wei was frantic. His hands clenched without his noticing, and his voice dropped.

He was trying to save his career. Unfortunately...

"Objection!"

At the Defendant's Bench, Xu De gave a sudden sneer, his hawklike gaze locked on Chen Wei.

He rose in court and turned to the witness.

"Witness, the plaintiff claims you changed your story repeatedly, making your testimony entirely unreliable. Why did you change it?"

A witness who changed her story did lose credibility, but if the reason came to light, she could regain it.

Chen Wei was wondering the same thing.

His brows drew together, his angry expression froze, and he glanced instinctively at Li Li.

Chen Wei could not understand it.

He truly could not understand why she would testify for the defendant and accuse her own relative, Li Youcai!

After all, they were all from Li Family Village. They saw each other every day.

What if Li Youcai and Liu Cui went home after court and made trouble for her!?

How? Just how had the other side persuaded Li Li!?

Chen Wei was not the only one.

At that moment, the three prosecutors, the hundreds of spectators, and the three judges all turned puzzled looks on Li Li.

But could she say she had her eye on Li Youcai's property?

Of course not.

A moment later, Li Li spoke slowly...

"The two of them got everyone in the village to agree to lie to the police."

Li Li said it casually, stripping away the last cover from the plaintiffs' statements.

"It didn't sit right with me, so I came to testify. I'm not the only one. A few others are willing too, but they're busy these couple of days, so I came alone."

Lies... a guilty conscience... testimony to back it up...

She spoke plainly, unlike the prosecutors and Xu De with their legal terminology, but her words hit just as hard!

"False testimony? The plaintiffs got the other villagers to collude with them? All those statements were lies!?"

"Wait, then the evidence the prosecutors have..."

"No wonder the defense lawyer kept attacking the credibility of the statements at the first hearing. He saw through them back then!?"

"They got the whole village to give false testimony? Can they even do that?"

"..."

False testimony... The prosecution had used testimony the plaintiffs had deliberately fabricated!

Even though the prosecutors had doubted those statements at the second hearing and had not used a word of them, it did not change the fact that false testimony existed in the prosecution's case!

This was a criminal case, one that had even involved an accusation of intentional homicide. For false testimony to surface in a case like this...

All at once, the spectators stirred again. This time the commotion was almost impossible to contain. The courtroom grew noisy, shocked faces everywhere.

At the Prosecution Bench.

Prosecutors Hu Guang and Wang Wei turned ashen. They looked back at Li Youcai and Liu Cui, but could only swallow their anger.

They truly had doubted the testimony's credibility, which was why they had not used any of it this time.

Who would have thought the plaintiffs would still drag them down...

Chen Wei was no calmer. If anything, he was even closer to bursting a blood vessel than Hu Guang, cursing furiously to himself.

Who the hell tells people outright to do something like that...

A vein bulged on Chen Wei's forehead. He looked back at Li Youcai and Liu Cui, who were visibly guilty and uneasy, and clenched his fists to keep from cursing them aloud.

Was that the kind of thing you could directly ask someone to do?

Could they not have hinted at it, played for sympathy, or had a relative talk to them instead!?

But no, they had said it themselves... Did they think their chances of winning were too good!?

He forced down his anger anyway, took a deep breath, and abruptly changed the subject.

"Presiding Judge."

"On the matter of civil compensation, our side can make some concessions compared with the first hearing..."

Chen Wei forced the words out.

A 230,000-yuan award would have been a resounding victory, but with the prosecution under this much pressure, there was clearly no chance of getting it.

Then... 100,000!

Even 80,000 yuan would keep this case from counting as a loss for him. He could pin the blame squarely on the prosecutors.

After all, this was a criminal case with an attached civil claim.

If they lost the criminal case, was it not perfectly normal for his civil result to suffer!?

The prosecutors were the ones who had failed!

As for whether the defense would agree to negotiate... Surely they would.

Eighty thousand yuan for a human life. Who would say that was not worth it!?

Unfortunately...

Zhang Bingxin was about to speak, but before he could...

"Objection!"

Xu De cut in again, breaking everyone's train of thought. He stood once more and spoke plainly.

"Presiding Judge, we object to the civil compensation claim in this case!"

Another objection?

The civil claim came down to objective facts and compensation under the law. There was hardly any room to argue. What could he possibly object to?

Now the spectators were not the only ones baffled.

Even the three judges on the bench were at a loss. They exchanged glances and saw the same confusion in one another's eyes.

In the end, Presiding Judge Zhang Bingxin could not help asking,

"Defense, shouldn't you... hear the plaintiffs' terms first?"

They had offered to make concessions. Should he not bargain them down, then negotiate from there?

"We wish to state our objection!"

Xu De repeated himself.

Zhang Bingxin fell silent for a moment, then said,

"Defense, go ahead."

After that, Xu De did not speak at once. He lowered his head and searched the table for something.

Everyone watched in confusion, their eyes following his movements until...

He raised a sheet of paper.

Was that...

Chen Wei narrowed his eyes. From nearly ten meters away, he could not see it clearly, but the document's layout looked familiar. Then...

"Presiding Judge, this is the Settlement Agreement the plaintiffs signed after speaking with us before the hearing."

Xu De's face was expressionless. He looked at the presiding judge as though reporting something trivial.

"The plaintiffs, Li Youcai and Liu Cui..."

"...agreed to settle with the defendant, Wang Qiang, over the consequences arising from this case. The compensation amount has already been agreed upon. There is no need to negotiate it again in court."

A... a Settlement Agreement!?

Zhang Bingxin: ?

Hu Guang and Wang Wei: ?

The spectators: ?

The instant those words landed, the vast First Courtroom fell so quiet a pin could have dropped.

Everyone stared openmouthed at the raised document. Some even rubbed their ears, as if checking whether they had misheard.

Did he mean...

Li Youcai and Liu Cui, who had just been so hostile they seemed ready to kill Wang Qiang... had forgiven the defendant?

They had forgiven a suspect accused of killing their own son!?

Huh?

What??

Hu Qing, the rookie prosecutor who had kept quiet and come to learn, turned to look at the guilty-looking Li Youcai and Liu Cui, then at the paper in Xu De's hand. His gaze darted between them, but his mind remained full of question marks.

His seniors had told him that the tide could turn at any moment in a hearing, and something rare might happen without warning.

But right now, Hu Qing wanted to say...

Wasn't this a little too rare!?

"A Settlement Agreement?"

Compared with everyone else,

Chen Wei's mind went blank. He stared at the document, his ears ringing, then turned an incredulous gaze on Li Youcai and Liu Cui.

They still looked guilty and would not meet his eyes. Clearly, the Settlement Agreement was real.

"You two!"

In a daze, Chen Wei felt a rush of blood shoot to his head.

His face flushed scarlet. Veins stood out on his forehead and throbbed. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white, not even noticing his nails digging into his palms.

What kind of joke was this...

He was up front fighting for compensation,

while the plaintiffs had surrendered and settled behind his back!?

More importantly... if they had settled, why had they not told him earlier? He could have gone along with it, claimed he had persuaded the plaintiffs to settle, and earned himself a good reputation. What was the point of keeping him in the dark!?

Had they waited until court just to screw him over one last time!?

Chen Wei's breathing grew ragged. His vision blurred as his blood pressure climbed, and he gasped for air.

Everyone else reacted differently.

Presiding Judge Zhang Bingxin opened his mouth. While Chen Wei's ears were still ringing and he could hear nothing, Zhang checked with Li Youcai. He confirmed that they had indeed signed the Settlement Agreement and were asking for a mere 9,000 yuan.

Now all three judges fell silent.

For nine thousand yuan, they would no longer pursue the death of their own son...

A long moment passed.

Only then did Zhang Bingxin open his mouth, ready to say something else.

"The prosecution..."

But Xu De clearly had no intention of letting anyone at the bench off yet. He spoke again.

"Presiding Judge, we haven't finished."

"In addition, the plaintiffs submitted a Letter of Understanding to us. They are willing to forgive the defendant for the harm he caused them in this case."

He produced the Letter of Understanding as well.

Now the courtroom, already silent, grew quieter still. Everyone was left struggling to make sense of it, stunned for a long while.

Only Xu De's voice continued, not loud but perfectly clear.

"We have finished. If the prosecution or the plaintiffs have any further objections, they may raise them. If there are no objections to this case..."

Xu De paused, then the next few words came out.

"Then, Presiding Judge, please..."

"Decide!"

With those two words,

Presiding Judge Zhang Bingxin wanted to speak, then stopped. He tried again, but the words stuck in his throat.

At this point, the hearing was essentially over.

It was indeed time for the bench to deliver its judgment.

But there was a problem...

What judgment could he give?

Not guilty?

But in theory, the Procuratorate and the courts almost never allowed a clear-cut killing to go unpunished when the two sides had a dispute and the killer had lost control of his emotions.

In a country of more than a billion people, there were only a handful of cases each year in which an adult had unquestionably killed someone and was found not guilty. No more than five were likely made public!

No court or judge would dare hand down a verdict lightly.

So should he find the defendant guilty?

At that thought,

he lowered his head and looked at the record on his desk, compiled by the clerk from the evidence the defendant had submitted and verified. It read:

["Voluntary Surrender + Legitimate Self-Defense + Act of Bravery + Special Defense + Testimony + Witnesses + Letter of Understanding + Settlement Agreement + Special Circumstances..."]

At the Judges' Bench,

Presiding Judge Zhang Bingxin, dressed in his robe, stared at the long list of "factors" before him. Usually stern and rigid, his gaze unreadable,

he now looked faintly shaken. His lips parted, but the words stuck in his throat.

The corner of Zhang Bingxin's eye twitched.

How... how was he supposed to rule on this? With all of that stacked together...

Even a death sentence could be reduced to no punishment at all, with the defendant released right here in court!!!