I believe there have been cases where this has been documented, but, as has been mentioned already, those are just when one of the elite kills or rapes a peon and can’t avoid the publicity. I can’t imagine that they’d let people who got caught up in a purge, and were being tried as a result of a power struggle within the party, get away with that. If those two pictures of Gu Kailai are of different people, it’s because she’s not in good enough health to drag into a courtroom for a show trial, not because they’re letting her off the hook.
