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Judge Dee Research Paper

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Judge Dee Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee is a translated Chinese mystery story of a judge who investigates three murder cases. While he is solving the cases he sometimes used dreams, fortune telling, and ghosts to help decided on the case. According to the preface, “The law permits the judge to put the question to the defendant under torture, provided that there is sufficient proof of his guilt.” (Judge Dee, p. XVIII). When Judge Dee is in the process of solving the cases he uses torture to get a confession out of all the suspects he interrogates. Since the Judge is using ghosts, dreams, and fortune telling for ways to help him decide the case, it is possible that he will torture an innocent person. A concern for the common people is that he …show more content…

In the book, Judge Dee is torturing Mrs. Djou to confess and she responds, “If you, because of a private grudge, persist in slandering and torturing me, well, they say that the doors of the higher authorities are always open for the persecuted and the oppressed.” (Judge Dee, p.61). This statement shows that the power of the Magistrate is a concern and the government has allowed the people to complain if the Magistrate is using his political powers unjustly. This also shows that Mrs. Djou has the ability to defend herself against being treated unjustly and can go to someone higher than Judge Dee to complain that she has been tortured while she is innocent of the crime accused against her. The opinion of the general public also have a way to get rid of the Judge, “If the populace were to choose to sabotage the administration of a magistrate, taxes would not have been paid on time…. And after a few months a censor would have appeared on the scene, for the purpose of investigation.” (Judge Dee, p.XXII). If the public did not like the Judge they could not obey him and cause him trouble by not paying taxes which would get the Judge in trouble with the potential of him losing his job. This show that the people have some way to remove a Judge that is not fair by either going to the government that is in control of him or by giving him trouble by not paying taxes and …show more content…

Near the end of the book Judge Dee has finished getting the confessions out of three suspects, the crime they committed recommends death as the punishment. So he gathered all the evidence and submitted it to the Imperial Court. A couple weeks later in the book it says, “the prefect forwarded the Imperial ratification of the capital punishments proposed for Shao Lee-huai, Hsu Deh-tai and Mrs. Djou with only a few changes made by the Board of Punishments, on the recommendation of the Metropolitan Court.” (Judge Dee, p. 213). This shows that Judge Dee can not punish his suspects however he wants. He has to prove the case and submit it to the Metropolitan Court if the punishment is to be death. The higher courts have to approve the punishment and tell the judge how the death penalty should be carried out. The police that works for the Judge have the ability to not obey the Judge because they know that if they torture an innocent person that they will be punished also. So the Judge also have to prove to the people that works for him that follow out his orders that he is correct because they also risk the possibility of death and punishment if he is wrong. The person that is accused also have the power to not be punished unjustly because Judge Dee can not prove that someone is guilty unless the suspect confess to the

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