[3] Female judge sexually assaulted by security guard in court office during epidemic

 Recently, an intermediate people's court issued a notice to all its departments and to the people's courts of each county (city, district) regarding an attempted assault on a female judge by a security guard:

The notice stated, "Recently, a case occurred in our city in which an outsourced security guard attempted to assault a female judge working overtime in her office at night but failed, resulting in minor injuries to the female judge during the struggle. At present, the public security organ is conducting further investigation."
 

The bulletin employed three parallel clauses to express strong shock, indignation, and condemnation. The incident occurred during the pandemic prevention and control period when personnel control was strict, within the internal premises of a judicial organ that appeared heavily guarded to outsiders, and in the office where judges routinely work and handle cases. The act was extremely egregious, the impact extremely damaging, and the lesson extremely profound. It is a typical case of “darkness under the lamp” — an inside job.
 

First, there is little dispute that the security guard is suspected of rape or the crime of forcible indecent assault or insult against women. However, the biggest issue in this case is: who should try this case?
 

[6] In practice, criminal cases are usually under the jurisdiction of the people's court where the crime occurred. This means that if the security guard commits a criminal offense, the female judge from the intermediate court, as the victim, would theoretically have the first trial in a basic court and the second trial in the intermediate court. It is hard to imagine that the basic court, as a subordinate of the intermediate court, could remain objective and fair during the trial. Meanwhile, since the second trial is in the intermediate court, this raises the issue of collective recusal for both the first and second trial courts.
 

In current judicial practice, collective withdrawal of courts mainly includes the following situations:
 

First, where the judicial organ is a party to the case or has an interest or other relationship with the case that may affect the impartial handling of the case;
 

Second, where members of judicial organs are involved in litigation due to official acts;
 

Third, cases where one of the litigants is the Party committee, people's congress, government organ, or CPPCC at the same level as the court's jurisdiction, or their principal leaders;
 

Fourth, when the principal leader or person in charge of the judicial organ, their close relatives, or staff members are parties to the case or have an interest in the case.
 

Although China's current Criminal Procedure Law does not have explicit provisions on collective withdrawal, nor does judicial interpretation contain the content of the collective withdrawal system, cases requiring collective withdrawal of judicial organs often occur during criminal proceedings.
 

For instance, in the earlier "Panda Burning Incense" computer virus propagation case, the internal network of a court in a city in Hubei Province was paralyzed by the virus, causing the household registration system to crash. Subsequently, the household registration section of that bureau reported the case to the bureau's cyber surveillance detachment. After the case was solved, a situation arose where the bureau was both the investigating authority and the victim. At this point, although the investigators did not have other circumstances requiring recusal, since all investigators were staff members of the victim unit, this clearly fell under the statutory circumstance of "having other relationships with a party to the case that may affect the impartial handling of the case," and therefore all staff members of that bureau should have recused themselves from the case. Similar cases include the Jiangxi Fuzhou City Court bombing case, the Jilin Court bombing case, the Hunan Yongzhou shooting of a judge case, the Hainan case of a prosecutor murdered at court, and so on.
 

Therefore, with societal development, collective recusal issues are increasingly encountered. To address collective recusal in practice, establishing a clear and comprehensive collective recusal system is crucial. It not only ensures that parties have their cases tried under relatively fair procedures, reducing unnecessary appeals and petitions, saving judicial resources, and improving judicial efficiency, but also helps prevent investigators from engaging in malpractice or forming preconceptions, ensuring their objective and fair handling of criminal cases, and safeguarding judicial authority and fairness.
 

References: Wang Xuetang, "On the Collective Recusal System of Courts, Starting from the Attempted Sexual Assault of a Female Judge on Night Duty by a Security Guard"

Author unknown, "Collective Recusal in Criminal Proceedings"

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