Wife stabbed husband three times, but court ruled her not guilty

Compiled from: The Paper, China Youth Net

Case review
Qiu Moumei and Zhang Mou had been married for 10 years and had a son in 2010. The son had congenital malformation of the right ear with hearing impairment and had undergone surgical treatment in the hospital three times, using autologous costal cartilage to reconstruct the right auricle. In addition, Qiu Moumei and her husband frequently quarreled and fought over trivial family matters.

 

A neighbor testified that the quarrels between Qiu Moumei and her husband even disturbed the normal rest of nearby neighbors. "Everyone knew they had a bad relationship. Qiu Moumei once said she really wanted a divorce, but she endured it because the child was pitiful. Her child has a physical disability and needs a large sum of money for surgery. This woman is very kind and also very pitiful. No one gives her living expenses, she often lacks money, and she often goes out to find work to supplement the household income."

The court found that: On the evening of July 2, 2019, the two repeatedly argued and tangled over the issue of divorce, and agreed to handle the divorce procedures the next day. At around 1 a.m. on July 3, Zhang arrived at the residential compound where Qiu Moumei and her son lived, and tried to enter the premises by calling, knocking on the door, and throwing small stones at the window, but Qiu Moumei did not open the door or respond. After Qiu Moumei called the police, the responding officers were never able to locate the scene, and therefore persuaded and warned Zhang by telephone. Qiu Moumei then called Zhang’s mother for help. After all efforts failed, she took a single-edged fruit knife from the kitchen, hid it in her hand, and opened the door. After Zhang entered the house, he immediately insulted and beat Qiu Moumei, forced her into the bedroom, and slapped her.

After being hit, Qiu did not immediately resist with the knife but instead hid it by the bedside. Seeing his mother being beaten, the son struck Zhang on the back with a toy Golden Cudgel. Zhang then pinned the son to the bed with one hand, knelt on his legs, and punched the son's buttocks with his right fist. To prevent her son's ear from being injured, Qiu intervened with her bare hands. When her intervention failed, she picked up the fruit knife from the bedside and stabbed Zhang three times in the back, with two of the stabs penetrating the chest cavity.

After Zhang was injured, Qiu Moumei immediately rode an electric bicycle to take Zhang to the Yangluo Campus of Hubei Provincial Third People's Hospital for treatment. Zhang was hospitalized for 12 days before being discharged. According to forensic identification, Zhang's injury was comprehensively assessed as a serious injury of the second degree.

 

On August 21, 2019, Qiu Moumei was released on bail pending trial. On August 27, Qiu Moumei and Zhang Mou completed their divorce procedures. Qiu Moumei waived all her property rights as compensation to Zhang Mou, and Zhang Mou issued a letter of forgiveness, requesting that Qiu Moumei be exempted from criminal punishment.

On November 11, 2019, the People's Court of Xinzhou District, Wuhan City, charged Qiu Moumei with intentional injury and initiated a public prosecution. The prosecution held that Qiu Moumei's act of self-defense clearly exceeded the necessary limit, causing serious harm, and should be held criminally responsible, recommending a sentence of two years' imprisonment with a three-year suspension.

In court, Qiu voluntarily pleaded guilty but argued that she stabbed Zhang to prevent harm to her child, requesting exemption from criminal punishment.

[1] Relevant laws and regulations
"Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China"
[2] Article 20: Justifiable Defense
[3] An act that is taken to stop an ongoing unlawful infringement in order to protect the state, public interests, or the personal, property, or other rights of oneself or others, and that causes harm to the infringer, constitutes justifiable defense and shall not bear criminal liability. If justifiable defense clearly exceeds the necessary limits and causes major harm, criminal liability shall be borne, but the punishment shall be mitigated or exempted. Defense actions taken against ongoing violent crimes such as assault, murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping, or other serious violent offenses that endanger personal safety, resulting in injury or death to the infringer, do not constitute excessive defense and shall not bear criminal liability.

[4] Article 234: Intentional Infliction of Injury
[5] Anyone who intentionally inflicts injury on another person's body shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years, criminal detention, or public surveillance. If the crime in the preceding paragraph causes serious injury to another person, the offender shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years; if it causes death or causes serious injury resulting in severe disability through particularly cruel means, the offender shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, life imprisonment, or death. Where this Law provides otherwise, such provisions shall apply.

[6] Opinions of the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Justice on Lawfully Handling Criminal Cases of Domestic Violence
Article 19
Accurately determine legitimate defense against domestic violence. In order to protect the personal rights of oneself or others from unlawful infringement, actions taken to stop ongoing domestic violence, as long as they meet the conditions stipulated in the criminal law, shall be legally recognized as legitimate defense and bear no criminal liability. If the defensive act causes serious injury or death to the perpetrator and clearly exceeds the necessary limit, it constitutes excessive defense and shall bear criminal liability, but the punishment shall be mitigated or exempted.
In determining whether defensive conduct "clearly exceeds the necessary limits," the standard should be the need to sufficiently stop and protect the defender from the unlawful infringement of domestic violence. A comprehensive judgment should be made based on the severity of the domestic violence being committed by the abuser, the cruelty of the means, the environment in which the defender is situated, the degree of danger faced, the means adopted to stop the violence, the extent of the serious harm caused to the abuser, and the severity of past domestic violence.

[1] Court Opinion
In this case, Qiu Moumei, due to marital disputes, was harassed and disturbed by her husband Zhang until the early morning hours during their separation, and both she and her son were beaten by Zhang. To prevent damage to her son's reconstructed auricle, which had been operated on less than a month ago, Qiu Moumei, after failing to stop Zhang with her bare hands, stabbed him three times in the back with a single-edged fruit knife. This act meets the conditions of legitimate defense in terms of cause, timing, intent, and target, and both the prosecution and defense have no objection to this.

The focus of the dispute in this case is whether Qiu Moumei's legitimate defense clearly exceeded the necessary limit and caused significant harm.

In response, the court comprehensively assessed and stated: To determine whether defensive conduct "clearly exceeds the necessary limits," the standard should be based on what is sufficient to stop and protect the defender from the unlawful infringement of domestic violence, and a comprehensive judgment should be made based on the environment in which the defender was situated, the degree of danger faced, the means adopted to stop the violence, the severity of the domestic violence being perpetrated by the abuser, the extent of the major harm caused to the abuser, and the history of prior domestic violence.

First, prior to the incident, Qiu Moumei was repeatedly harassed by Zhang due to marital conflicts, with the harassment continuing until the early hours. After calling the police for help, the responding officers failed to arrive at the scene. Following unsuccessful attempts by the police to persuade Zhang over the phone and Qiu's plea for help from Zhang's mother, she had no choice but to open the door to face the enraged Zhang. Given that both Qiu and her son had previously been physically and verbally abused by the hot-tempered Zhang, Qiu prepared a fruit knife for self-defense after exhausting all means of seeking help, feeling isolated, fearful, and at a significant disadvantage in strength. Her advance preparation and tool readiness were justified and reasonable.

Second, after Qiu Moumei was insulted and slapped by Zhang Mou, although she had a knife in her possession, she did not immediately resist with the knife, but instead put the knife down and hid it by the bedside, which reflects that Qiu Moumei still exercised a certain degree of forbearance and restraint at that time. When Zhang Mou pinned his son on the bed and beat him, although he was only striking his son’s buttocks, the violent suppression and harm inflicted by an angry adult on a 9-year-old child carried an obvious risk of causing his son’s rib cartilage to be injured and his reconstructed auricle to be severely damaged. Given that Qiu Moumei took into account circumstances including her son’s congenital deformity of the right ear, the prior harvesting of autologous costal cartilage for auricle reconstruction, and the fact that less than one month had passed since discharge from his third surgery, and feared that her son’s operated ear would be damaged, after her unarmed attempts to stop him proved futile, she stabbed Zhang Mou with a knife in desperation to stop his harm to her son and avoid serious consequences of damage. Such conduct should be evaluated as justifiable defense.

The court held that in determining whether Qiu Moumei's defensive act clearly exceeded the necessary limits, full consideration should be given to a mother's urgent desire to protect her son from harm, and full consideration should also be given to Qiu Moumei's normal stress response under her tense and anxious state at the time and to her son's special physical condition. After Zhang was injured and stopped beating her son, Qiu Moumei also immediately stopped stabbing him. At this point, one cannot, from the standpoint of a calm bystander after the fact, excessively demand that the defender adopt "equivalent means," requiring the defender, under isolated and highly tense circumstances, to make an objective, calm, rational, and accurate response and to carry out an act that just barely stops the unlawful infringement. Nor can one fall into the error of "result determinism," making a post-event judgment based on all the objective facts ascertained, and in particular, one must not infer retrospectively from the defensive consequence of serious injury whether the defensive act was excessive. Instead, one must put oneself in the defender's position and make a comprehensive judgment based on factors such as the cause of the incident, the consequences the unlawful infringement might have caused, and the objective circumstances at the time, and appropriately give consideration and recognition favorable to the defender.

In summary, the court determined that Qiu Moumei's act of justifiable defense did not exceed the necessary limits and that she should not bear criminal liability. On June 24, 2020, the Wuhan Xinzhou District People's Court ruled Qiu Moumei not guilty.

[1] The author's perspective
In this case, the court's judgment took into account not only whether Qiu Moumei's actions met the legal limits of justifiable defense in principle, but also the psychological reactions under the special circumstances at the time. Although Qiu Moumei's act of stabbing Zhang with a knife may at first glance appear to be excessive defense,
However, it must be taken into account that after enduring prolonged abuse, Qiu Moumei's psychological state was no longer that of an ordinary person. Moreover, Zhang turned to beating her son who had just undergone surgery. At that moment, Qiu Moumei must have been deeply traumatized, and given that a mother would not want her son to be hurt again when he was so vulnerable, her act of "grabbing a knife and stabbing her husband" was entirely out of a mother's protection of her son and was a helpless act made in desperation. Under circumstances where the physical strength of the woman and the man was completely unequal, Qiu Moumei had no choice but to resort to a more extreme means to survive. Therefore, whether the defense here was excessive should not be measured by ordinary standards.

We see that such a wife endured her husband's brutal beatings with great tolerance, yet in a moment of desperation to protect her son who had just undergone surgery, she stabbed and injured her husband. While we sympathize with the wife's misfortune, we also marvel at the greatness of this maternal love.