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China Elevator Stories
It Would Be Easy For My Chinese Ex-Husband To Get Away With Murder And He Knows This
In a legal sense, it would be difficult to sue my ex-husband for commissioning a murder.
02/06/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
Would my ex-husband have to go to prison if he commissioned someone to murder me? The answer is: Probably not.
The Austrian and Chinese judicial systems are two separate entities. A murder can be prosecuted in China if a person with legal residency in China commissioned it, but it would be unlikely that anyone would sue him in China if the murder occurred in Austria. If anyone were to sue him in Austria, as far as I know, an Austrian court’s ruling may not be enforced in China because Austrian courts don’t have jurisdiction there.
My ex-husband knows this.
This is what he once wrote in a WeChat message (he was referring to a different lawsuit, but in the context of the Austrian and Chinese judicial systems being separate, the point still stands):
Me: “I filed a lawsuit one year ago. Wait until the court issues you the letter.”
Him: “An Austrian court has no use in my case. How often do I have to tell you this? We are in China.”
Him: “Even if they gave me a death sentence? Can they run to China and enforce it? Or can the army come here and catch me?”
Of course, I could be wrong, and there may be some kind of bilateral agreement I don’t know about that applies in the case of murder, but not in certain civil law cases.
My ex-husband mentions a death sentence in his message. Austria abolished capital punishment completely in 1968, as did the majority of European countries. This is different from China, where people who commit severe criminal acts still frequently receive a death sentence.
Have you ever had to go to court?