Portugal's judiciary has handed out harsh sentences in the past, but issuing the death penalty to two Chinese citizens, whose daughter died when they went out gambling in a Lisbon casino, was exceptional - and wrong.
The parents of the five-year-old Chinese girl, who died in February 2016 after falling from the 21st floor of a tower block in the Parque das Nações in Lisbon, were back in China when they received notification of the death penalty which, as they had not realised this was a translation error, caused them to suffer stress and no small degree of despair.
This error, among many others, in the transcription of Portuguese into Mandarin has caused Jiong Wu and Wenzheng Wu’s lawyer to demand of the Judicial Court of the District of Lisbon that the documents be scrapped and that a correct translation be issued.
"In the indictment, received by the defendants in China, it is stated that they are accused of 'committing a crime of exposure or abandonment ... and sentenced to death.' That's according to lawyer Correia de Almeida, who said the couple were thrown into "a state of deep despair" after opening their mail.
"The notification has caused them a deep consternation because, there’s no death penalty in Portugal, anyone in Portugal would immediately realise the mistake, but this is not the case in the Peoples Republic of China where the death penalty exists and is used.
The petition to change the translated accusation document, states that the defendants "are unaware of the facts" of which they are accused, only knowing "that they have been sentenced to the death penalty.”
The Chinese couple not only are grieving over the accidental death of their child, but are facing a court case for which accurate translation is essential so they can work with their lawyer, see precisely what they are accused of and thus present their defence.
The trial has got off to a poor start. It was scheduled to begin on May 3rd of this year, but on that day the president of the panel of judges, Pedro Nunes, explained that the translation of the documents was only completed on April 27, so the defendants had not been given enough time to respond – the law grants a 20 day period.
The court rescheduled this first hearing for September 27th when the defendants, both 40-years-old, will be accused of 'exposure or abandonment, aggravated by the result of the death of the child who was left alone while the couple went to the Casino de Lisboa - as parents, they violated their obligations and duties by abandoning the child in the apartment, while they went to the Casino de Lisboa, thus endangering their daughter's life.'
On the night of February 19, 2016, according to the indictment, the defendants left five-year-old Yixuan Wu, alone, presumably sleeping, between 00:00 and 03:11, and went to the casino.
The prosecution alleges that the defendants knew that the door was easy to open, that the residence was on a 21st floor and that it could happen that the child, even if tired, could wake up during the night and, being alone, would go looking for them and open the balcony door, climb the railings and fall.
