Suddenly Murderous Intent Arose: Bureaucratization and Benevolence in Eighteenth-Century Qing Homicide Reports

Abstract

SUDDENLY MURDEROUS INTENT AROSE: BUREAUCRATIZATION AND BENEVOLENCE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY QING HOMICIDE REPORTS* Thomas Buoye Pity the poor county magistrates responsible for investigating and preparing homicide reports in eighteenth-century China. Homicides were complicated and emotionally charged crimes that inflamed passions and disrupted social order. Homicide investigations required patience, tact, intelligence, and forensic skills. With twenty different statutes that carefully delineated punishments on the basis of the relative status of victim and perpetrator and the manner in which the killing occurred, homicide law was complex. Recommending punishment, an important component of each homicide report, also required careful and precise deliberation. Despite the complexity of the law and the gravity of the crime, it was expected that each report would be concise and unambiguous. Once completed, the magistrate's report formed the basis for an elaborate two-tiered process of review. Except under extraordinary circumstances, Qing law mandated automatic judicial review for all capital crimes, at each level of government administration.1 The initial process of judicial review established culpability. Upon completion of this judicial review, the Autumn Assizes, an equally exhaustive process, reviewed sentencing for almost all capital crimes.2 Ultimately, only the emperor himself could authorize capital punishment. Thus, the county magistrate's homicide "I wish to thank the editors and readers of Late Imperial China, my co-panelists Mark Allee and Robert Antony and commentator, Melissa Macauley at the Midwest Conference on Asian Studies where an earlier version of this piece was presented, and my colleagues at the University of Tulsa, Patrick Blessing, Kermit Hall, and Michael Mosher for their comments and suggestions. Of course, any errors which remain are my own. This article draws on research which was supported by the Committee on Scholarly Communications with China, with funding from the Department of Education, the Office of Research at the University of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities. 1 Summary executions, such as the wangming zhengfa, were exceptions to this rule. This type of execution was reserved for serious crimes involving rebellion, piracy, and secret societies. 2Some cases were sentenced to "immediate" execution, in which case sentence was carried out without further review at the Autumn Assizes. In the eighteenth century such Late imperial China Vol. 16, No. 2 (December 1995): 62-97 62 Suddenly Murderous Intent Arose: Bureaucratization and Benevolence 63 report exposed his professional performance of an extremely complicated and serious task to inspection by his superiors, including the emperor. From the standpoint of the county magistrate, no document received greater scrutiny than the homicide report. From the standpoint of the historian, there is no better source for understanding both the substance of Qing criminal law and the role of the county magistrate in its application. Li Versus Law? Considerations of legal procedures and job security aside, adjudicating homicide was also fraught with a prickly philosophical dilemma, the apparent tension between legalist bureaucratic structure and the Confucian orientation of officials. In his groundbreaking work on Chinese law, Law and Society in Traditional China, Ch'u T'ung-tsu addressed the duality in Chinese law in a chapter entitled "Li versus Law."3 According to Ch'u, legalism sought to impose objective standards of punishment, while Confucianism recognized the inherent inequalities in society and adjusted the law to accommodate them. When it came to shaping human behavior, legalism used rewards and punishments to mold behavior, while Confucianism employed moral persuasion to improve the individual. In his study of the organization of the Qing bureaucracy, Thomas Metzger framed the legalist-Confucian dichotomy differently : "primary dependence on the state's immediate tools of power . . . versus primary dependence on the forces of moral solidarity."4 Looking at the bureaucracy in action, Metzger noted the "general ambivalence ... in Confucian thought toward legalist methods," and argued that while Confucians philosophically opposed the punishment of officials, they could tolerate it "as an unavoidable part of the government."5 Li versus law posed interesting philosophical questions; however, for the county magistrate responsible for maintaining order at the grass roots level, it was more than an academic debate. John Watt's study of the county magistrate during the Qing dynasty defined the conflicting roles: "the role learned in study," represented by the...