Kiriko said excitedly, "Why didn't you defend us at that time?" Even if the real culprit is found at this time, the brother will not come back to life. In order to save my brother, I took out what little money I had and hoped that mr. you would save him. The result? Sir went golf the next day! You also say' you can't afford to pay your lawyer'. Then they rejected me.
These are the words of Kiriko in Kiyoharu Matsumoto's masterpiece "Flag of Mist".
The novel is mainly about the brother who is dependent on Yanagida Kiriko, who is accused of being a suspect in a murder case, and after being arrested, because the evidence is conclusive, the panicked brother is unjustly accused of being unjustified and faces the situation of possible death.
Believing that her brother was innocent, Kiriko Yanagida took what little money she had left and traveled from Kyushu to Tokyo to find the famous lawyer Keizo Otsuka, hoping that he would defend her brother. However, Otsuka's lawyer is anxious to go golf with his lover and hastily ends his meeting with Kirito, and because Kiriko cannot afford to pay the high legal fees, he coldly refuses Kiriko's request.
Cover of the book Flag of the Mist
Kiriko pins all her hopes for her brother's innocence on lawyer Otsuka, but because she has no money, she does not ask for a lawyer, and her heart struggles bitterly.
In the end, the brother was sentenced to death in the first trial, and while waiting for the second trial, he died in prison for unknown reasons. The story does not end, and Kiriko, who has lost her brother, takes revenge on Otsuka's lawyer, allowing him to taste the torture of his beloved lover who has been wronged but cannot be rescued. However, Kiriko also paid the price of giving up her innocent love with Keichi Abe.
Kiriko Yanagida and Keichi Abe in the movie "Flag of the Mist"
In this novel, there is no winner. Keizo Otsuka, a once-glorious lawyer, was also imprisoned in a detention center for luring witnesses to commit perjury and ruining his future, and his lover, who was regarded as a murder suspect. Kiriko, in order to make Otsuka feel the pain of being powerless to save her lover, did not hesitate to use her pure body to tempt Otsuka to make mistakes, and from then on she could no longer fall in love with the warm and upright Abe normally.
After reading it, I can't help but wonder, is the role of the law to escort the rich or to bring justice to the poor? If advanced laws are difficult to be hostile to indifference, then where do suspects who may not be guilty but cannot afford a lawyer go?
The author, Kiyoharu Matsumoto, is a japanese literary guru who has been hailed as "an insurmountable peak in the history of Japanese speculative fiction." He is the third world-class master of detective fiction after Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
Known as a pioneering work of sociology, Kiyoharu Matsumoto focuses on both crime and human nature, starting with a murder in debt and ending with another homicide with similar methods. The truth of the case has long been clear to the reader, and there is no need to bother reasoning, but what is thought-provoking and chilling is the similar weakness, selfishness and indifference of the Japanese at that time.
In the movie "Flag of the Mist", Kiriko Yanagida retaliates against lawyer Otsuka
The novel Flag of The Mist was published in 1961, and in 1977 yukazu Miura and Momoe Yamaguchi starred in the film adaptation. So, in what era was the novel created?
Japan in the 1950s and 1960s was in the midst of a period of post-war depression to a period of "sweet growth" to a bubble economy. The Japanese economist Hiroshi Arizawa has used this passage in his book "A Century of Japanese Industry" to describe Japan's post-war economic situation:
On the one hand, there are the wreckage of a large number of war production equipment that has become worthless, crooked; on the other hand, there are people who are not clothed and hungry, fleeing from east to west... It's a man-made desert.
Subsequently, Japan took the "theory of great powers" as the core idea of the country's economic development, and used a tilted mode of production to promote economic recovery. However, the "sweet growth period" of the economy has put Japan in another embarrassing situation.
On the one hand, the rapid growth of the national economy and the continuous flow of government fiscal revenue; on the other hand, there is the coexistence of overcapacity, the generally low income level of residents, the huge income gap, and the high unemployment rate.
Income levels are generally low, just like the protagonist of the novel, Kiriko Yanagida, who graduated from high school and can only work as a typist at a small company. Faced with Keizo Otsuka, who is already a well-known lawyer in Tokyo, although she tries to persuade him to be moved by her brother's case, hoping that he will take over this life-threatening case for the sake of justice. However, the inability to pay the high costs of lawyers and travel is the real helplessness, and it is also ruthlessly closed by Otsuka and his assistants to save their lives.
Keizo Otsuka and Kiriko Yanagida in the movie Flag of the Mist
Yanagida Kiriko's despair and trembling, through the paper, can also be deeply felt, it is a disappointment and dissatisfaction with the social system, but also a mockery of overestimating the faith of lawyers.
A person who is treated as a criminal for no reason may be sentenced to death, just because he does not have Mr. Qian, he will not reach out to rescue him, right? My brother's life may not be saved, if I had 800,000, I might be able to save it, but we didn't, this is our misfortune. Through this incident, I understood that the poor should not have any extravagant expectations for the lawsuit, and I feel sorry for my non-division of thoughts.
Although, later, out of the consideration of the only remaining conscience, after the death of Kiriko's brother, Otsuka took the case file and found that the real culprit in the case was someone else, who should be a left-handed murderer. However, the test of human nature has once again come, and he does not dare to confront the existing judicial system, does not dare to overturn the case for the deceased, and is even more unwilling to take care of things to cause trouble to himself.
But what are the duties of lawyers? Is it to speak out and fight for justice, or is it to "collect money and eliminate disasters for people"? Is it a righteous defender, or an accomplice to evil?
In the movie "Flag of the Mist", Kiriko later went to work as a barmaid
Bacon said, "One unjust judicial decision has more consequences than ten crimes, because the crime only pollutes one stream of water, and the wrong judicial judgment pollutes the entire water source." ”
This requires that lawyers must uphold justice in the process of representing cases, and this justice is, first of all, procedural justice and individual justice. As barrister Tian Wenchang said, "Lawyers are neither angels nor devils, do not represent justice, nor do they represent evil, lawyers are a duty entrusted by law, through a unique way of defending and representing the parties, to achieve the purpose of safeguarding legal justice." ”
It can be seen that the duty of lawyers is to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of parties, stand in the perspective of the law, and make them treated equally by the law. Instead of being in a vanity fair, advocating for "fame and fortune", the whole society cannot use the ruler of wealth to measure a person who has settled down in a lawsuit. Character and quality are more infectious than professionalism, valuing righteousness over profit, and wantlessness is rigid.
The manifestation of justice is not the banner in the author's heart?
In "Flag of the Mist", Kiriko and her brother could not afford to pay the lawyer's fee, could not afford to hire a barrister, did not know where the level of public lawyers sent was not high, did not find loopholes in the case, and finally failed to calm the grievances of Kiriko's brother.
It can be seen how important it is to defend criminal suspects and defendants in criminal cases. This is a matter of life, you can't misplace a bad person, but you can't wrongfully accuse a good person.
The movie "Flag of the Mist" If the brother is acquitted, Kiriko and Abe together, they should laugh so brightly and beautifully
In cases of violation of the criminal law, fines are imposed on the minor offences and imprisonment or even the death penalty is imposed. China's Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that criminal suspects have the right to a defence and legal aid from the beginning of the investigation phase. The Lawyers Law also stipulates that where a lawyer serves as a defender, he shall safeguard the procedural rights and other lawful rights and interests of criminal suspects and defendants on the basis of facts and law.
It can be seen from this that criminal suspects and defendants who cannot afford to pay for lawyers and meet the requirements for legal aid can obtain legal aid in China. Specifically, there are two ways: "individuals apply to the legal aid center set up by the local judicial administrative organ" and "case-handling organ notifies the defense (agent)", and the legal aid institution uniformly accepts, reviews, assigns and supervises.
In 2017, the Beijing Legal Aid Center caused a sensation in the "case of juvenile Xiaojia deliberately providing legal aid for infanticide". Xiao Jia (pseudonym) was 16 years old at the time, and when she was in high school, she met and interacted with a boy. Soon after, Xiao Jia found out that she was pregnant and wanted to have an abortion, but she did not make the trip until Xiao Jia was more than nine months pregnant. During her pregnancy, Xiao Jia studied at school and went home as usual. Due to the loose and fat clothes worn, the school and family have never noticed anything unusual.
When she was more than nine months pregnant, one day Xiao Jia was in class, suddenly felt unbearable pain in her abdomen, and gave birth to a child in the school toilet in ignorance. Xiao Jia was frightened and frightened by everything in front of her, and she did not want others to know her secret, so she covered the child's mouth and nose to prevent him from crying. Subsequently, Xiao Jia was found by the school teacher. After the 120 doctors arrived, Xiao Jia took the initiative to tell the doctor about the process of covering the child to death.
After the incident, Xiao Jia was released on guarantee pending further investigation. In July 2016, a lawyer at Beijing Zhicheng Law Firm was assigned by the Beijing Legal Aid Center to provide legal aid to Xiao Jia, a minor suspected of intentional homicide, in the first instance trial.
In response to this relatively special juvenile criminal case, the legal aid lawyer focused on making a rationalized sentencing recommendation, pointing out that the recipient was a minor at the time of the crime and had statutory circumstances such as voluntary surrender, suggesting that the court fully consider the particularity of such crimes, and recommending that the court impose a suspended sentence, which was finally adopted by the court.
Not only that, legal aid has also expanded from "outside the big wall" to "inside the big wall", and the "duty lawyer system" has enriched and supplemented the legal aid system. Legal aid institutions are to dispatch duty lawyers in courts and detention centers to provide legal assistance to criminal suspects and criminal defendants who do not have a defender, and make it clear that the Public Prosecutor's Law shall inform criminal suspects and defendants of their right to such assistance.
"Once this system is put in place, all criminal suspects who enter the detention center will be able to obtain the legal services of duty lawyers at the first time, which will be a huge progress in the cause of judicial protection of human rights in China." Gu Yongzhong, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, said.
As an "emergency department doctor", the assistance lawyer is equivalent to a "daily doctor", and the duty lawyer needs to have high professional ability. Both social lawyers and lawyers of legal aid institutions should accept the arrangements of legal aid institutions to provide duty lawyer services, and most legal experts also believe that this is a social obligation that lawyers should undertake.
Tian Wenchang, a well-known lawyer, also said, "From my personal point of view, I hope that the legal profession can make some contributions to legal aid within its capabilities." ”
Fighting for the freedom and justice of the parties involved, defending a life worthy of respect, the road, although full of thorns and bumps, is also full of glory and dreams. The fog clears, the flag of freedom and justice flutters in the wind...