Gu Kailai Trial Sheds Light on China's Legal Flaws

That was fast. After a one-day murder trial on Aug. 9, there was no doubt the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court would soon deliver a guilty verdict against Gu Kailai, the wife of purged princeling Bo Xilai, a Politburo member and party boss of Chongqing before his ouster in March led to the biggest political crisis in China since the 1989 democracy movement. The big question was what sentence Gu and her co-defendant, Zhang Xiaojun, would receive.

For that, we wait. Court deliberations are supposed to take time. After all, even a show trial has to follow certain norms. The court “is simply playing the part,” says Jerome Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and a leading authority on Chinese law. “They want to make it look like the court is making the decision.”