Research On The System Of Guilty Plea In The Perspective Of Procedural Law

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 18 th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in the year of 2014 put forward the goal of promoting the reform towards trial-centered procedure system,which brought the criminal system reform into a new era.Against the background of trial-centered procedure system reform,the reform of the criminal speedy trial procedure and that of the system of leniency based on peccavi,both of which are crucial procedures of the system of guilty plea of the accused,were triggered within China's criminal judicial system.Focusing on the system of guilty plea of the accused,the dissertation,in the first place,mainly applying the approaches of values analysis,system analysis,comparative study and empirical study,looks back on the theoretical foundations of the system,explores the values and targets the system pursues,and investigates successful experience of foreign countries with developed legal system.Based upon such theoretical analysis and extraterritorial inspection,the paper is to provide beneficial recommendations for improving the legislation and judicial practice regarding the system within China's criminal procedure system via reviewing China's existing system of guilty plea of the accused.The system of guilty plea of the accused is a criminal judicial system guided by the theory of procedure subject,negotiated justice,restorative justice and other criminal procedure concepts.The system is still developing.The cases are classified based on the standard of guilty plea of the accused to fit different trial procedures.In this way,the system of guilty plea of the accused in the criminal procedure law sets up a diverse and elaborate set of procedures coordinated by negotiation system of the prosecutor and the accused,criminal speedy trial procedure,criminal summary procedure,criminal reconciliation system and ordinary procedures.The direct goal of value that the system pursues is the improvement of judicial efficiency.However,the inclination for value of efficiency does not mean that the justice will be completely substituted by efficiency.The ultimate goal of value should be judicial justice and the system must guarantee the ‘baseline justice'.By means of theoretical examination and extraterritorial examination of the system of the guilty plea of the accused,the dissertation maintains that the core requirement for applying this system is the voluntariness and wisdom of the guilty plea of the accused,whereas,that the case ‘is clear in its basic facts and is sufficient in basic evidence' shall be the standard that has to be met when the accused is sentenced with measured penalty after the substantial examination of a case by criminal justice.The restructure of the system of the guilty plea of the accused must adhere to the principle of voluntariness and wisdom of the guilty plea,the principle of authenticity of the guilty plea and the principle of the final judicial examination.Restricting the system of the guilty plea of the accused is imperative since the content of the system has many problems.First,the framework is incomplete with negotiation system of the prosecutor and the accused in its real meaning yet to be built and specific rules for simplifying procedures to be improved.Therefore,the thoughts of system restructuring should be straightened by regarding the effective guilty plea of the accused as the core element of the system,and by building and improving specific mechanisms,such as the negotiation system of the prosecutor and the accused,criminal speedy trial procedure,criminal summary procedure and other simplified procedures,as well as criminal reconciliation system etc.,within the framework of the system of the guilty plea of the accused,so as to realize the systematization of the system.Second,the mechanism that ensures the voluntariness and wisdom of the guilty plea of the accused needs improvement.Therefore,the criminal justice authority's obligation of notification needs to be standardized and strengthened,the accused's right to view the files and to obtain lawyers' effective help needs to be improved,and the withdrawal mechanism for the accused needs to be rationally limited.Finally,the objectiveness and operability of the leniency system calls for further improvement.In this respect,a ladder-style mechanism of leniency with multiple levels shall be built based on the stipulation of penalty measurement in criminal substantive law.