Qin Official

In the twenty-first year of the Qin Dynasty, in late April, just after the Beginning of Summer, the weather in Anlu County became hotter and hotter every day. Molecular crickets chirp in the lush grass, and earthworms emerge from the soil. In the vegetable gardens of every household, king melons grow and bitter herbs bloom, creating a prosperous summer scene.

In Guansi District, located in the county seat, there is also restlessness in the air.

In the county jail, the wardens and jailers stood guard outside the jail nervously. They had to send someone in every half an hour to inspect the jail because it was full of prisoners who had not yet been sentenced.

The weather was hot, the cells were small and smelled bad. The one hundred and eighty criminals, or seemingly ordinary people, were sitting on the rice straw with a sad face at this moment, regretting what they had done.

The jailers were talking a lot. It was not easy to keep an eye on them with just over ten people. How did the chief of the small pavilion capture all the people in the prison with five people?

In the lobby separated by a wall, the county magistrate was also worriedly watching the officials arguing with the legal documents, and secretly cursed in his heart: "It's all the fault of the Huyang Pavilion Chief, I just asked him to find a woman who was robbed and sold. But I captured everyone here, what will happen to me now!"

At this time, more than a month had passed since the blind mountain incident that shocked the entire county.

This case involved many people, so from the county magistrate to the magistrates, the judges of Anlu County spent more than half a month and many all-nighters before they came up with the origin of the woman who was robbed and sold, and the crimes of everyone in Blind Mountain. , the faults are all clarified one by one.

But the most difficult thing is still to come. Under the leadership of local officials, people in Blind Mountain have repeatedly bribed and sold women of unknown origin, and have protected each other. During the investigation by Pavilion Chief Heifu, they maliciously surrounded them, and some even killed officials and fled. Intention, these crimes cannot be washed away.

But then, the question arises, how to judge? A light sentence or a heavy sentence?

"Now that the crime is clear, just follow the law."

Yu Fengxi has a clear attitude and acts according to the rules!

But the county magistrate still hesitated.

"Xijun, this matter is different from ordinary cases. It involves the lives of one hundred and eighty people. You cannot be careless."

Xi Zhengse said: "County Magistrate, Qin Lvli, there has never been a precedent of lenient treatment because of the large number of criminals! At the beginning of the Shang Dynasty's political reform, some members of the public family did not follow the law and fought privately, and those who were punished Hundreds of them were killed, and the heads of the Wei River turned red. In the ninth year of this king's reign, Lao Ai conspired to rebel, and he himself was divided by chariots from the Yi tribe. Thousands of his family members were also confiscated and their property was confiscated, and they were moved to a remote place in Shu County. …”

"If you punish thousands of people, let alone more than a hundred people?"

"How can Anlu, a small county, be compared with Shang Jun and the king?"

The county magistrate said in a consultative tone: "Except for a few principal criminals, can the rest of the prison guards be counted as surrendering and their guilt reduced?"

"Xian Cheng, the people in Blind Mountain didn't even think about surrendering and pleading guilty. They just incited them to kill the officials and escape after the prison gate was shot and killed, and then they were arrested under the intimidation of Pavilion Chief Heifu."

Xi still refuses to give in. Since the evidence and confessions show that everyone did not surrender, they cannot be lenient!

In his view, in the collision between law enforcement and illegality, there is only victory or defeat, no mercy!

The county magistrate couldn't convince this stubborn subordinate, so he stamped his feet in anger. He knew very well that if he strictly followed the law, he didn't know how many people would die and how many people would be punished.

By then, this case will surely shock Nan County and even Ting Wei, becoming the most typical major case in the country this year. Not only will he, the county magistrate, not be praised, he will also be impeached because of his lax governance and poor law enforcement, which has led to such a big hole. Even if he is not punished, it will leave an embarrassing mark on his resume. .

Because of this, the judgment was delayed again and again. The county magistrate asked the county magistrate for instructions, but there was no reply for a long time. It was really annoying.

Fortunately, by the end of April, Nanjun's order finally came belatedly.

The county magistrate did not expect that the county magistrate's reply had exactly the same opinion as Xishi, just four words:

He must be punished without mercy!

It turns out that Nanjun is not idle these days either. Based on the confessions of the robbed women in Anlu County, the county magistrate dispatched several capable officials from Jiangling City, followed the clues, and finally killed a group of people who specialized in abducting young men and women in Jingling County. The man who had abducted Yuanyuan The "old woman" was among them.

After the surprise interrogation, the county magistrate was shocked to discover that this gang was committed by a family, and its tentacles were spread all over Nanjun. It is related to hundreds of missing persons cases in various counties in South County in the past few years. Most of the missing people were teenagers and girls, the women were sold to remote villages, and the men were even sold to Wei and Chu as slaves!

It actually involves population exodus! Is this a big deal? So while the county magistrate sentenced all the traffickers to death, he also decided to send a document to Anlu County, requesting that the case be treated as a death case! Make it a model to warn the people in the county!

Since the county magistrate also said so, the county magistrate, who was a little soft-hearted, had no choice but to look up to the sky and sigh, and asked the jailer Xi and others to hurry up and convict the prisoners.

…

"There is an upright person in the blind mountain. As a local official, he knows the law and breaks the law, protects the people in the house, secretly communicates with the looters and traffickers, takes the lead in buying women, and rapes the woman Yuan many times. What's the point?"

In the hall, Ling Lile was responsible for recording. Because there were too many people involved in the case, they had to determine the charges of each person before sending them to the county magistrate to read out.

The jailer Xi was responsible for determining the punishment of criminals. Although he knew the Qin laws by heart, in order to be accurate and avoid making mistakes, he still had to find the "Robbery Laws" and "Miscellaneous Laws" among the piles of laws and sentences, and sentenced them according to the corresponding laws.

"Li Zhengfeng in the blind mountain is a heinous crime. According to Article 9 of the "Law of Robbery", robbing and selling people is a crime; knowing someone and betraying someone, and selling someone to Jia, is the same crime. His crime deserves death, plus rape, rape and other crimes, he should The sentence is to be broken! His family members knew clearly that he was breaking the law but did not report it. They also assisted in the detention of the sold woman Yuan. They should also be punished and their property should be confiscated. The man had his toes chopped off and became a Chengdan; the woman had her face tattooed and became a concubine!"

Le quickly wrote it down and asked the next name: "What about Tian Dian?"

"Tian Dian was not involved in the human trafficking, so his crime is slightly lighter, but the crime of dereliction of duty and cover-up is unavoidable. His title will be removed, his family property will be confiscated, his toes will be chopped off and he will become a Cheng Dan, and his family will be beaten for Cheng Dan!"

As for the prison gate who called on the residents to kill officials and flee, although he is already dead, since he dared to shout this slogan, he must be prepared to be crushed and ashes. His putrid bones must be dug out and replaced with a new one. The chariot was broken into pieces, and all his family members were reduced to urban rape.

In Xi's subsequent sentencing, the families who paid to buy the women they knew to be robbed were also sentenced to death. The three brothers who brutally tortured the trafficked woman and put her in a pig pen. One of them died from a crossbow injury. The remaining two were additionally charged with two counts of rape, rape, and wounding, and three counts. Both were punished, and received the treatment of a car being broken.

All in all, three people in Blind Mountain were beaten to death and ten were beaten to death.

Following Xi's decision, Le used a red pen to check off 13 names in the list of slips at once. His hands were shaking a little. After all, just one tick could mean a life.

He secretly thought: "The law will not tolerate mercy. This sentence is really appropriate to put on the prison guards. I must be careful not to break the law in this life, so as not to fall into the hands of the prison guards..."

However, Xi really has a place to be open-minded.

In addition to the four women who voluntarily asked to leave, those families who also purchased the women many years ago were spared their lives because the women who were robbed refused to admit that they were being robbed and sold.

It turns out that in the Qin State, cases also have applicable statutes of limitations. Cases older than ten years will no longer be accepted by the government. Moreover, for a criminal case to enter the litigation process, the premise is that someone reports it. If the person involved does not report it, it will not be accepted, which is equivalent to "no report, no action" in later generations.

Therefore, as long as those women who have been kidnapped and sold for many years and have given birth to children do not reveal their identities and do not take the initiative to accuse their current family members, there will be no legal proceedings.

Xi knows that if he gets to the bottom of it, and even uses torture, he will definitely be able to dig out all the old stories and sentence those people to death.

But after hesitating, he still did not extend the rope of the law.

He is an official, but not a cruel official.

He handles cases faithfully and in accordance with the law, but he also has his own bottom line as a human being.

What's more, this does not mean that those people are innocent. This case involves a common crime in the entire Blind Mountain. According to the Qin Law's Shiwu Lianzuo system, as long as they are adult men and women, one by one, they will all be held accountable.

What's more serious is that they were also suspected of attacking officials and even shouted slogans to surrender to the Chu Kingdom... This is the most fatal point. Thinking about it afterwards, if they could follow Heifu's suggestion and surrender with him, they would not be in danger. ended up like this.

The last day of April happened to coincide with the day of sentencing. Because there were too many criminals, each family could only send one principal criminal to attend the hearing. In this way, the entire county jail lobby was packed with people.

Seeing so many criminals, even the Anlu County Magistrate couldn't help but feel numb, and his voice became hoarse when he read "jū".

In the end, except for the 13 principal criminals who were sentenced to death, almost all the others became prisoners!

In severe cases, dozens of people were subjected to corporal punishment and were tortured by Chengdan. In mild cases, hundreds of people were also tortured as ghosts and white cans. There was no hope of regaining their freedom within three to five years. Only three families who were hunters who lived far away from home escaped unharmed because they were proven not to be involved.

The parents were sent to the labor camp, and the children who were underage were taken into custody by the hermit officials. When they reached adulthood, they were sent to various places as soldiers or servants.

There are no eggs left after the nest is overturned. With this sentence, the whole nest in Blind Mountain is equivalent to being wiped out. Everyone will be a prisoner, and the organization here can be directly cancelled.

This also means that this year, the officials in Anlu County, except for the county engineers who can applaud and laugh because they have more than a hundred convicts and concubines, the rest of the county magistrates, household officials, and rural misfits will all have sad faces. As the most important content of the official assessment for high-ranking officials: household registration, this year may not increase but decrease!

The growth of household registration in Anlu County is not fast. It can barely maintain a living. How can it withstand such a heavy blow.

Therefore, although the officials in the county, although they support and praise the man who handled the case and were happy with the verdict in accordance with the law, they have long been scolding him secretly...

"The chief of the pavilion who ruins the family, the warden who destroys the family!"