Song Ci, a famous forensic scientist of the Southern Song Dynasty, began his "Collection of Washed Grievances" with the words "Prison affairs are not more important than the great opening, the great opening is not more important than the initial love, and the first love is not more important than the examination" to explain the weight of prison. The so-called great opening refers to all death penalties. Therefore, in ancient times, the judgment and execution of the death penalty were quite rigorous.
1. Sentencing of the death penalty
Due to the severity of the death penalty and its irretrievability, all countries that belong to the rule of law and civilization are extremely cautious in their application. In modern China, the Supreme People's Court has the power to review the death penalty. But in fact, in ancient times, there was already a death penalty review system.
The ancient death penalty review system included death penalty review and death penalty review. Death penalty review refers to the cases that are intended to be sentenced to death, which are first reviewed by the relevant state departments, and then reported to the emperor for ruling before the final judgment is finalized. The repetition of the death penalty means that in cases where the death penalty has been sentenced, the emperor must be re-played for approval before the execution.
The ancient Chinese death penalty review system was established in the Northern Wei Dynasty, stereotyped in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and perfected in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the Han Dynasty, the death penalty review system was in its infancy, and it was the emperor who appeared in order to carefully decide the life and death of high-ranking officials. Only officials with an annual salary of more than 2,000 stones needed to be reviewed by the emperor before they were executed.
Therefore, the death penalty review system of the Han Dynasty was only applicable to a small scope, only to review some cases, and was not universally applied to all death penalty cases nationwide. In the Han Dynasty, whether the death penalty could be reviewed depended on the grade of the official.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the death penalty review system was gradually established. The Book of Wei records: "When the deceased, the ministry is heard. Death cannot be revived, the superintendent cannot be pacified, the prison is all presented, the emperor himself comes to ask, and there is no complaint. The great openings of the states and kingdoms are repaid first, but are carried out. "
By the time of the Sui Dynasty, the system of three repetitions of the death penalty was formally established, and the emperor had to be played three times before the punishment. Because each death penalty case has to be repeated three times, it is called "three repetitions".
The Book of Sui and the Chronicle of Criminal Law says: "The Fifteen Systems of the Emperor Kai: Those who commit capital crimes, three plays and then decides." "That is, it is through three requests that the final death penalty be decided.
By the time of the Tang Dynasty, Tang Taizong perfected this system and stipulated two kinds of "three-fold" and "five-fold", that is, the "three-fold" should be applied to local death penalty cases, and the "five-fold" should be applied to the death penalty cases of Jingshi. Judicial officials who do not act and arbitrarily punish those who are punished shall be subject to criminal punishment.
The "Tang Liudian Punishment Department" records that for those who are tortured and killed, they are allowed to repeat it twice a day before death, and they can still repeat it once on the day of execution, so as to avoid killing innocents by mistake.
Later, in order to avoid wrongful killing, Tang Taizong changed the "three-fold" before the execution to the "five-fold", two repetitions on the day before the summary execution, and three repetitions on the day of the finale. However, due to the lack of development of transportation in ancient times, the localities are far from the capital and the distance is different, and it is not realistic to implement the "five-phono", so Tang Taizong also stipulated that the local application of the three-phonology, the Beijing division to implement the five-phonology.
However, the death penalty may be applied to those who commit "evil rebellion" (i.e., beating and murdering grandparents, parents, killing aunts, brothers and sisters, maternal grandparents, husbands, and husbands' grandparents and parents), as well as those who are untouchables and slaves who commit the crime of killing their masters. The death penalty review system established by the Tang Dynasty has been used by subsequent dynasties.
During the Song and Yuan dynasties, the death penalty still needed to be approved by the relevant central departments. The Yuan Shi Penal Chronicle records that "and Zhongyuan Luoding, the governor of the prefecture, killed willfully, and even had no wife and daughter." Yerushalayim asked, 'When a prisoner makes a great cut, he will be punished, and the offender shall die.' 'From there. "
The death penalty during the Ming and Qing dynasties, whether it was a summary or an execution after the autumn, had to be examined and approved by the central judicial organs and the emperor. For death penalty cases that are decided, they are generally first examined and approved by the Punishment Department, examined by the Metropolitan Inspection Yuan, and then sent to the Dali Temple for trial and approval, and then the three legal divisions will play the emperor's final approval.
For death penalty cases executed after the autumn, the Ming Dynasty established a court trial system to review them. The imperial trial was issued by Tianshun in the second year, and began to be implemented in three years, and since then it has been "forever the law", "after the frost falls every year", and "the dynasty has complied with it", so history says that "the court trial began in the third year of Tianshun", which has become a mandatory system for the execution of heavy prisoners after the autumn.
On the basis of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty implemented two kinds of review systems, the autumn trial and the court trial, and all cases of beheading and hanging prisoners had to go through the autumn trial and the court trial. The autumn trial is to review the prison cases sentenced by the local provinces, and the court trial is to review the prison cases judged by the Criminal Investigation Department.
2. The origin of "execution after autumn"
The so-called autumn queen refers to after the autumn equinox and before the spring. The "Tang Liudian Punishment Department" clearly stipulates that "every year after the spring to the autumn equinox, the death penalty shall not be imposed." In addition, on important days such as the Twenty-four Solar Terms And the Emperor's Birthday, death row inmates cannot be executed.
The reason for choosing to settle accounts after autumn is mainly related to the ancient people's concept of natural theocracy, that is, human behavior should conform to providence. The autumn and winter seasons are the seasons when the trees are withering, and the execution at this time can conform to the meaning of "slaughter" in nature. The emperor is the son of heaven, and his actions must be more obedient to the heavenly time, so the execution of prisoners should also avoid the important heavenly time.
The autumn and winter execution system originated in the Zhou Dynasty. The Zhou Li Qiu Guan records that the punishment must choose a suitable date, and the "Li Ji Yue Ling" determines the most ideal time for torture, that is, Meng Qiu, Mid-Autumn, and Ji Qiu March.
It was Dong Zhongshu of the Western Han Dynasty who explicitly put forward the theory of "execution after autumn". At that time, when Emperor Wudi of Han was in power, Emperor Wudi of Han urgently needed an idea to put a legal cloak on the "divine right of kings", and Dong Zhongshu's "Heavenly Induction" and "Five Elements Theory" came into being, and since then, more than two thousand years of feudal society have adopted the practice of "execution after autumn".
3. "Three o'clock in the afternoon" is exquisite
In costume dramas, we can often see such a line, "Three o'clock in the afternoon has arrived, execution"! So why did the execution be at three o'clock in the afternoon? What's so special about that?
At three o'clock in the afternoon, around twelve o'clock in the afternoon, the ground shadow is the shortest. The ancients believed that at this time, the yang qi was the most abundant, and the yin qi dissipated immediately.
The ancient Chinese theory of yin and yang holds that the living are yang, the dead are yin, the human world is for yang, and the underground government is for hades, and killing people and asking for beheading is a matter of yin qi, so people are worried that after the prisoner dies, he will become an evil ghost to entangle the executioner.
On the other hand, for the death row prisoner who has committed the most heinous crimes, he is suppressed with the most exuberant Yang Qi, so that he cannot even do ghosts, in order to show severe punishment. Therefore, he chose to execute at three o'clock in the afternoon, when the yang qi was the heaviest, because even the most powerful ghosts could not fight fiercely in the case of extreme victory of the yang, and would only disappear in vain.
Therefore, a closer look at the ancients' emphasis on the death penalty reflects not only the law, but also the ancients' thinking about nature and life.