China's Great Wall of Silence: Principals in the Murder of a Principal

In societies governed by the rule of law, and not by orders,

there is the principle that if one helps another commit a

crime the helper is as guilty as the actual perpetrator. Thus

if Song Binbin desired someone beaten and got someone

else to do it for her then Song would be as guilty as the

one who physically inflicted the blows. Here is the law,

word-for-word, that governs a situation such as the above:


If Song Binbin helped another person or persons commit or

attempt to commit a crime, Song Binbin is a principal and

must be treated as if she had done all the things the other

person or persons did if:


(A) Song Binbin had a conscious intent that the criminal act

be done and,


(B) Song Binbin did some act or said some word which was

intended to and which did incite, cause, encourage, assist or

advise the other person or persons to actually commit or

attempt to commit the crime.


To be a principal, Song Binbin does not have to be present

when the crime is committed or attempted.



This law is not familiar to Song Binbin's defenders. Dr. Weili

Ye, for example, has written that "the actual perpetrators may

never be known...And even if the actual perpetrators could

be identified who's to say who inflicted the fatal blow?"


I have written of Dr. Weili previously here. I do not believe

that she has any intent to see justice done in Bian's murder.

I believe that she knows the names of some or all of the girls

who actually, physically beat Bian. Be that as it may, who

struck the fatal blow is utterly irrelevant under the law.

Further, the inability to identify any of Bian's actual

attackers does not necessarily absolve anybody. Weili

writes that she believes that it is possible to identify "the

instigators of that days events." If that is true and if all of

the conditions of the above law are met those instigators

would be criminally liable for Bian's murder. Of course, Dr.

Weili does not name them either.



The case for the defense presented by Weili and others has

also alluded to alleged pre-existing health conditions that

allegedly contributed to Bian's death. In Morning Sun Weili

makes a statement about Bian having high blood pressure. I

don't know if Bian did or did not. She and others indirectly

and directly have argued that since Bian's husband forbade

an autopsy and because the official cause of death is listed

as having occurred from "undetermined causes," it cannot

be proved that the beating caused Bian's death. That is

simply not the law.



There is another applicable principle of law, easily

understood by the case of the so-called "egg shell skull

victim," that applies here. Let us say that I am at a bar

and I get into a verbal argument with another patron.

During the verbal argument I, liberated of my inhibitions

by alcohol, haul off and punch the other person in the face.

Happens all the time. However in this instance, and to my

horror, the victim dies because, unbeknownst to me, he

had a genetically thin and vulnerable skull and my punch

fractured it, causing his death. I honestly tell the police:


(1) I didn't mean to kill him, I just punched him, and only

once.

(2) I didn't know the man had an egg-shell skull.



Unfortunately for me, the law does not recognize either of

those defenses: you take your victim as he is. In the one-

punch scenario above I would be guilty of manslaughter.



In Bian Zhongyun's case, high blood pressure, or the like,

would not absolve anyone from criminal liability for her

death. As for the lack of an autopsy and the official cause

of death being labeled from "unknown causes" neither of

those would be an impediment to prosecuting the case as a

homicide. Sometimes homicide cases are prosecuted

where no body is ever found, much less where an

autopsy is not performed. The law requires that all of

the surrounding circumstances be considered. Among the

circumstances would be photographs of the body. I have

seen the post mortem photographs of Bian in Hu Jie's

film Though I am Gone. Assuming that those are all of

the extant photographs (from my memory, I do not have

the photographs in front of me), there is evidence of a

beating on Bian's legs. I do not remember evidence of a

beating on her face or upper torso. Her face is fuller, as I

remember, than her face in the in-life photographs that I

have seen. Because of the lack of bruising, on the photo-

graphs available to me and as I remember them, I believe

that Bian's face is bloated because of post mortem edema,

not because of swelling from a beating.



We then consider the eye-witness accounts. In Though I

am Gone, Mr. Wang Jinyao recounts his parting that day with

Bian. He watched her walk to school, watched her until she

disappeared from sight. There is no mention of any

evidence of an acute physical problem, e.g, Wang does not

say that Bian stopped on her walk several times clutching

her heart; he does not say that she fainted or appeared to

be fainting at any time. Thus there is no evidence from the

widower that Bian was about to die from natural causes when

Wang last saw her.



We then have the eyewitness accounts of the physical

abuse inflicted on Bian. Whether from Red Guard sympa-

thizers or not, these accounts are wholly consistent. The

abuse lasted for hours. It took many forms: punches and

slaps, blows with different objects, painful forced kneeling,

scalding with hot water, and the apparent coup de grace,

forced heavy labor. Bian then collapsed and died.




Taken as a whole this evidence overwhelmingly proves

beyond a reasonable doubt that Bian Zongyun was a

homicide victim, not a victim of death by natural or

"unknown" causes. There is not a prosecutor in any nation

of law who would see this evidence and have a doubt that a

homicide had occurred.


Thus, neither an alleged pre-existing health condition nor

the lack of an autopsy, not the inability--or unwillingness--

to identify those who actually struck Bian, none of the

defenses offered by Weili Ye and others, would absolve

those who, not even present, met the conditions of the

above law on "principals" for the beating death of this

principal.


I am Benjamin Harris.