Chapter 21 Cruel officials and torture are indispensable in unjust cases

The methods of torture and confession used by those cruel officials must be described in detail here, otherwise the incidents that reduced the Tang Dynasty's state, the trials and purges at that time would not be understood. After Xu Jingye's uprising was defeated, Suo Yuanli immediately rose to the top and became a political figure. He was the first person to become a dignitary by being a whistleblower at that time.Xu Jingye's rebellion just provided a tense atmosphere for hunting down the suspects.The imperial court deliberately created a rumor that there was a large-scale conspiracy of rebellion, and that there were many conspiracy in many places.Compared with others, Suo Yuanli alone has too many arrests and fewer convictions.

many.Because he was the first to use the method of extorting a confession, and the method was unique.One of the tortures is to make an iron cap, put it on the defendant's head, and drive it in with a wedge, so that the iron cap gradually tightens until the confession is forced out;If the prisoner dies as a result, the prisoner dies.Another method is to make the prisoner lie flat, hang a big stone on the beam, and hang down on the prisoner's head. It can be hit lightly or hard, depending on the prisoner's consciousness.The third method is to tie the prisoner to the torture platform with his arms behind his back.Because Suo Yuanli seeks to make many arrests, high efficiency, and excellent grades, he usually forces prisoners to implicate others, relatives and acquaintances, etc. Therefore, every time one person is arrested, more than ten people are imprisoned.As a result, Suo Yuanli was deeply favored by Empress Wu, and he was often summoned and praised.So Lai Junchen and Zhou Xing came one after another, doing the same thing.

The judicial system has so far disappeared.The so-called "legal" has a different meaning from before.In Taizong's time, only in autumn once a year, and after being reviewed by Dali Temple, the prisoner could be executed.Before the prisoner is sent to Kyoto to pass through Dali Temple for final settlement, he must go through three levels of trial in the local area.Now under the rule of Empress Wu, prisoners can be executed on the spot and then declared.In the past, the imperial censor's official office was used to deduce the details of the case, or to impeach and accuse it.Now there are two prisons in the official office of Suzhengtai, called Suzhengtai Prison.Among them, the censor Shi has the tasks of investigation, trial and executioner.According to Li Zezhi's proposal in the first year of Empress Dowager Wu, at that time, the 15 itinerant censors in Suzhengtai were all eight-rank officials, and they could execute prisoners on the spot, and prisoners had no right to appeal.

At that time, Lai Junchen, with the help of another executioner Wan Guojin, compiled a prosecution manual called "Luo Zhi Jing", which upgraded the law of forced confession and mutual accusation into a specialized academic study.Well-organized and portable, it was designed for the use of secret officials all over the country at that time. It taught people the subtle legal methods of murder and pressure with obvious and brief reminders.According to the "Luozhijing" and the technique of torture, you can get any confession you want, and the effect is excellent.Copper zippers are also very convenient to use.Whenever the treacherous party wants to implicate a prince or a minister, they will send informants from various provinces and counties far away.The judge himself prepared the murder papers.

Lai Junchen's superb skills must be described here.Lai Junchen's colleague Wang Hongyi once made a pun about Lai Junchen's official office.Lai Junchen did not have a prison, which was set up in Lijingmen by the order of Empress Wu, not far to the west of the palace.Wang Hongyi jokingly called Lijingmen "Lijingmen", which means that once the defendant enters Lijingmen, there will be no cure.No matter what crime the informant is charged with, Lai Junchen's first step is to pour vinegar from his nose.They were then thrown into a foul-smelling earth pit, and without food or drink, the prisoners were said to be so hungry that they chewed on their clothes, followed by nervous fatigue.Prisoners were interrogated one after another and were not allowed to sleep.As soon as the prisoner fell asleep, he was suddenly woken up, so after several nights of sleepless nights, his mind fell into a stupor, so he was asked what to confess, and was executed in the end.This method is extremely effective, and the defendant has no trace of torture.At that time, this method was extremely novel, fashionable, and progressive, and it was tried and tested, and no one else had ever thought of it. It was called a miracle.The old beliefs about life are now shattered, and the new generation of young children thinks that it is a "new era" and takes everything for granted.I note these circumstances in order to preserve historical fact.If there is another executioner in the future generations who wants to claim himself as the inventor of the method of extorting confessions through nerve fatigue, he should know that Lai Junchen had invented this method as far back as Empress Wu, and its novelty and progress are no less than today.And it is also to use a person's emotion of caring for his family and children to force people to confess.Every principle that uses all kinds of strange purges and interrogations to establish a brutal reign of terror has been invented and exhausted under the rule of Empress Wu.

Lai Junchen made another ten big flails: ①Fix the hundred pulses, ②I can't breathe, ③Suddenly roar, ④I will accept it, ⑤I lose my soul, ⑥The truth is the same as the opposite, ⑦The opposite is the truth, ⑧The dead pig worries, ⑨If you ask for it, you will die , ⑩ Seek to break the house.One is a torture device that forcibly twists a person's limbs; the other puts the head in the shackles, and drags the prisoner on the ground with a heavy object on the chest;Before the interrogation, put out these torture shackles.The defendant would rather ask what kind of recruitment, whatever, but to avoid torture.

According to Zhou Qiu's report on the brutal torture, there is another kind of torture: pouring sludge into the prisoner's ears, stomping on the head, heavy yoke with wedges, rolling yoke, squeezing the chest, and using bamboo sticks. Stabbed under the finger, grabbed the hair and hung the prisoner, and burned his eyes. These interrogations are terrible, first, because the informer, the accuser, and the judge are either actually the same person, or they are in collusion, either to destroy the person they want to destroy, or to act according to the secret order of the empress.Second, people are generally accused of treason, and family members and grandchildren have to be exiled far away.The average tyrant knows that when he refuses to confess through torture, he uses family affection to

Words that endanger their parents, wives, brothers, and sisters.Promises to family members to reduce sentences were sometimes kept and sometimes broken.Thirdly, in this way, the prisoner will inevitably be tempted to sue friends and acquaintances in order to reduce his sentence, so as to avoid death and be exiled far away. Just because a woman wanted to succeed in her ambition, she committed these heinous crimes, and in the Central Plains of China, where the sages taught with love and loyalty, people turned a blind eye to all virtues, or stole them and misinterpreted them to lose their true meaning. Under the circumstances, it is like returning to the barbaric age of ancient times, dying of terror; what is sadder is that life is always terrifying.Human beings are progressing, but at that time they have been progressing to the ancient wildness six thousand years ago.Civilization at that time had become a dream that human beings will soon forget.