Research On Confession-withdrawing In Criminal Procedure

Confession, as one kind of legal evidence to prove the truth of a case, refers to statements and exculpations of criminal suspects or defendants. It has advantages that the other kinds of legal evidence such as material and book evidence can not transcend. For example, probative force of a confession is very direct and comprehensive. However, big subjectivity and randomness of confessions leads to its relatively weak stability. Criminal suspects or defendants often withdraw their original confession in real lawsuit cases, which has negative impact on smooth lawsuit proceedings and judicial justice. Therefore, the thesis starts with concept and categories of confession withdrawal, develops a deep analysis on its character and harm and then brings forward legislative proposals of solving the problem on the basis of the current legislative rules related to confession and ways of handling confession withdrawal in legislative practice.Confession withdrawal in practice refers to a homonym for all behavior criminal suspects or defendants have done to change their original statements. Confession withdrawal is self-denial of criminal suspects or defendants about their original guilty, heavy-sin, unguilty or light-sin statements. It can be divided into wholly denial and partial denial according to its content, heavy-sin and light-sin denial according to its direction, denial with truth support and without truth support according to its investigation in trial.Confession withdrawal should be considered objectively and dialectically for it has both positive and negative aspects. Its positive aspects lie in its great impact on judicial procedure and proof. Impact on judicial procedure can be seen from diverse procedure to handle confession withdrawal adopted by China's public security and judicial organs. Impact on proof is mainly shown on the possibility of denial of original statements and production of new evidence. Negative aspects of confession withdrawal lie in its harm to judicial justice and guarantee of human rights and lawsuit efficiency. For instance, confession denial without truth support goes against finding out the truth, which leads to a big waste of judicial resources, hampers smooth proceedings of lawsuits, and delays the realization of judicial justice. Moreover, long custody caused by additional investigation does no good to guard against legal rights of criminal suspects or defendants or victims and has a negative influence on smooth processing of lawsuits.At present there are no clear and exact rules on how to handle confession withdrawal in China. Besides, there is no complete agreement on how to handle it in judicial practice. Fortunately, Supreme People's Court, Supreme People's Procurator ate, Ministry of People Security, Ministry of State Security, and Ministry of Justice put in place Rules on Some Issues Concerning Censorship and Judgment of Evidence in Death Sentences and Rules on Some Issues Concerning Exclusion of Illegal Evidence in Handling Criminal Cases (hereinafter referred to as "Two Rules on Evidence") in May,2010 after public exposure was given to the mishandled She Xianglin and Zhao Zuohai cases caused by ignorance of confession withdrawal. Two Rules on Evidence, important to judicial practice, ban extracting illegal evidence by bodily torture, make clear rules on excluding illegal evidence and launch investigation procedure of legitimacy of evidence. However, due to various reasons and approaches to confession withdrawal, a better way is to deal with it in different phases of litigation. Investigation phase is mainly responsible for recording the content of confession withdrawal in good faith and then verifying. Censorship phase is mainly responsible for pertinently questioning and checking up adaptility and reliability of evidence with the support of reasons of confession withdrawal. Trial phase is for making the accused guilty with evidence, technical questions and illustration.As far as the author's concerned, judicial officers should lay more emphasis on evidence than on statements of criminal suspects when they handle cases of confession withdrawal. Furthermore, judicial system should be promoted and perfected by borrowing advanced foreign legislative experience such as right of silence, change of thinking mode, expanding participation of lawyers and punishing severely those who withdraw confession without truth support. Only by doing this, can confession withdrawal be greatly reduced and effectively handled on the premise of guarantee of human rights of criminal suspects or defendants.