Chapter 506: Exploiting loopholes to exert coercion! These are all dirty tricks!
What troubled Guan Yuandong was not just the possibility of angering his superiors. There was another issue in this case.
He had personally contacted the Intermediate People's Court during the first instance and told them to impose six months of fixed-term imprisonment.
If the High Court overturned the first-instance judgment, the Intermediate People's Court would clearly have objections as well.
Whether it was Su Bai's influence, pressure from above, or objections from the Intermediate People's Court.
All these factors left Guan Yuandong deeply conflicted, unable to come up with an effective solution.
After all... each of those three factors carried considerable pressure.
If he ruled normally and did not uphold the original first-instance judgment, it would affect his superiors and provoke objections from the Intermediate People's Court.
But if he ruled abnormally and upheld the original judgment, he would be going head-to-head with Zhang Hongtao's retained lawyer, Su Bai, in this case.
They already had neither legal nor moral grounds on their side in this case.
"Of course... we can't refuse to accept this case either, because there are no legitimate grounds for initiating the procedure to refuse it."
"With substantive evidence, no matter how powerful Zhang Hongtao's retained lawyer's connections are, how much influence he has, or how much public opinion he can stir up online."
Seeing an opportunity, Xiao Shan hurriedly spoke.
"President Guan, my view is that our High Court absolutely cannot uphold the first-instance judgment in this case."
"With substantive evidence forming a complete chain of evidence, how to approach and resolve this matter becomes much clearer. We can use precisely that to convict Zhang Hongtao."
"We can say that the current evidence is insufficient to convict Zhang Hongtao and temporarily decline to accept