\n<\/p>\n
When Son Jun-ho, a key midfielder for South Korea\u2019s World Cup soccer team, signed with a Chinese club, he was an indication of China\u2019s ambition to dominate the world\u2019s most popular sport.<\/p>\n
But after Chinese police officers detained him two years later, accusing him of bribery and match-fixing, he became a symbol of a different sort: the ruthless efficiency of China\u2019s legal system.<\/p>\n
Mr. Son had insisted to his interrogators that he was innocent. He asked for a lawyer, but the police told him, through a Korean translator, that one was unnecessary. The police threatened to bring his wife in and asked how his children would fare if both parents were detained.<\/p>\n
After months in detention, he was offered a deal in which he was promised a lighter punishment in return for signing an admission of guilt. He took it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It was a move he would later regret, saying that he had signed only under duress. \u201cFear overtook me, and without fully understanding the charges, I confessed, hoping to return to my family,\u201d Mr. Son told reporters at a news conference in South Korea, fighting back tears. \u201cIt was a na\u00efve mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n
The arrangement Mr. Son was offered, known as plea leniency in China, is a legal tactic that scholars say has further eroded the rights of the accused in a judicial system that has long been stacked against them.<\/p>\n
The courts and police in China answer to the Communist Party and the conviction rate is more than 99 percent. Still, the party has tried in recent years to create a more equitable justice system, including by introducing the \u201cplea leniency\u201d system.<\/p>\n
That system has now transformed how justice is carried out in China by enabling the authorities to process cases more quickly. But it has also made the system less fair, lawyers and experts say, by giving prosecutors more power to determine who gets punished and for how long.<\/p>\n
In the last few years, as Xi Jinping, China\u2019s top leader, has waged crackdowns on corruption across society, the plea tactic has become a critical tool used by prosecutors. It has been used in investigations into officials, the military, the financial industry, and, as in Mr. Son\u2019s case, sports, as well as in campaigns to stamp out organized crime and so-called evil forces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cPlea leniency is being practiced in a disturbing way,\u201d said Pu Zhiqiang, a former human rights lawyer in Beijing who was disbarred in 2016 for \u201cprovoking trouble\u201d for criticizing Chinese officials. \u201cThreats used during interrogations, sleep deprivation, nobody regulates the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Son\u2019s detention in 2023 was part of a broader nationwide anti-corruption campaign in soccer. Many high-ranking officials have been ensnared, including the former president of the Chinese Football Association, who was sentenced to life last year for accepting bribes.<\/p>\n
The authorities announced in September that a two-year investigation had uncovered gambling and match fixing involving 120 matches and 41 football clubs. Mr. Son was among 43 players and officials China said would be banned from the sport for life.<\/p>\n
Many details about the investigation have not been made public, and the question of his innocence may not immediately be resolved. But Mr. Son\u2019s account provided a glimpse into how individuals accused of crimes can be pressured into accepting plea agreements. It also gave a sense of how prosecutors use guilty pleas obtained this way to build bigger cases against other suspects \u2014 in this case, his teammate, Jin Jingdao.<\/p>\n
Mr. Son told reporters he thought the document he had signed, which was in Chinese, was acknowledging that he had received a payment of about $28,000 from Mr. Jin. Mr. Son said that there was nothing illegal about the payment, describing it as a normal financial transaction between friends.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Son had been detained in a cell in the northeastern city of Shenyang with 20 other people for nearly a year, he told reporters. \u201cEveryday felt like hell because I didn\u2019t know when I\u2019d be released.\u201d It was only after he signed that document, in March last year, he said, that he was allowed to return to South Korea.<\/p>\n
He later learned that Mr. Jin had confessed to match fixing and that the document Mr. Son had signed would be used as proof he had received a bribe from Mr. Jin to throw a game in 2022. Mr. Jin was later also banned for life.<\/p>\n
When China introduced the plea leniency system in 2018, it was hailed as a major advancement in fairness that would allow those who admitted guilt voluntarily to be granted a \u201clenient\u201d punishment.<\/p>\n
The aim was also to streamline a judicial system grappling with a caseload that has surged over recent decades. Leniency deals can be offered to suspected offenders even before any formal charges are filed. They now account for about 90 percent of convictions.<\/p>\n
But lawyers and experts say suspects are often misled into making false confessions. Even the top prosecutor\u2019s office<\/a> recently signaled a need for caution, saying plea deals should be examined for signs of coercion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In recent interviews with Chinese media, judges raised concerns that the courts were merely rubber-stamping plea leniency deals without studying them closely. Law professors have questioned whether quotas imposed on prosecutors were creating incentives for them to strike deals hastily.<\/p>\n