After leaving the Duke of Chen's Residence, Pan Long went to the Court of Judicial Review's prison.
The Court of Judicial Review was an intermediary institution between local government offices and the Ministry of Justice.
Under Great Xia Law, punishments fell into five grades: execution, exile, penal labor, imprisonment, and fines. These meant death; ten to twenty years of hard labor in a remote, desolate place; up to ten years of labor; up to three years of confinement; and a fine accompanied by a public reading of a confession, respectively.
Beyond those five grades were supplementary punishments such as caning and beating with a wooden board, but they were rarely used. Di Jiazi had laid down a rule years ago: no corporal punishment except during interrogation. Even then, shutting someone in a dark room was far more effective than simply beating them.
Of the five grades, sentences of execution and exile had to be submitted to the Capital Region for review. The Court of Judicial Review handled that review.
The Court of Judicial Review examined and confirmed exile sentences. Death sentences, after its review, went to the Ministry of Justice for a second review. Only when the Ministry of Justice found no errors and sent its approval back to the local authorities could an execution be carried out.
Thus, when local officials sentenced a prisoner to death, they generally set the execution several months later to allow time for both rounds of review by the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice.
In practice, the Court of Judicial Review often brought prisoners sentenced to exile to the Capital Region for a personal review. Its prison was therefore always packed with people awaiting transport to barren mountains and treacherous waters for hard labor, people who would probably never live