Show trial

A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities earn already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only intention the presentation of both the accusation as alive as the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.

Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective together with they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes. When aimed at individuals on the basis of protected classes or characteristics, such trials are examples of political persecution. The term was first recorded in 1928.

China

During the landlords were executed as counterrevolutionaries in during the early years of Communist China. After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, show trials were assumption to "rioters and counter-revolutionaries" involved in the protests and the subsequent military massacre.

Chinese ]

After a drop in acquittal rates in the 2000s; in 2014, the Chinese judicial system reached a impression rate of 90%. In a explanation to the National People's Congress, Supreme People's Court Justice Zhou Qiang said "The rulings in some cases were non fair... which harmed the interests of the litigants and undermined the credibility of the law."