Case of Flogging of Officials in Wu Slips

During the Jiahe era of Emperor Sun Quan's reign in the Eastern Wu kingdom, a number of low-ranking officials serving in the Linxiang Marquisate of Changsha Commandery were investigated for misconduct, including dereliction of duty and minor corruption. The case was documented on bamboo slips unearthed at Zoumalou. The official in charge of judicial examination, Lu Shi Yuan Pan Wan, conducted the interrogation and verification of the accused officials. Following the statutory ordinances of the Wu state, Pan Wan imposed corporal punishment on the collective group, sentencing them to varying numbers of strokes of flogging with the whip and beating with the heavy staff. The precise nature of the specific transgressions varied, but the case demonstrated the routine application of administrative and physical penalties to maintain discipline among the lower bureaucracy in the southern regime.

The accused officials were collectively found guilty of administrative offenses and sentenced to flogging and beating, with the number of strokes distributed according to the severity of each individual's infraction as recorded in the bamboo slips.

The primary dispute focus lies in whether the collective application of corporal punishment to a group of officials was proportional and equitable for their respective individual offenses, and whether the legal ordinances of the Wu kingdom allowed for such standardized mass sentencing without detailed individual hearings, raising questions about judicial due process in local administrative discipline.

This case, preserved in the Zoumalou Wu slips, provides invaluable primary-source evidence for understanding the practical operation of law, local governance, and bureaucratic discipline in the Eastern Wu kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period. It highlights the harsh realities of lower-level officialdom and the direct, physical nature of state authority in maintaining order, significantly enriching the study of Chinese legal history where records from this period are otherwise scarce.