On The Crime Of Helping Criminals From Escaping Punishment

Article 417 of the current criminal law provides that:A public servant of a State organ obligated for banning criminal activities provide information or other facilities for the criminals to help them from escape punishment shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention; if the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than 10 years." The Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment is a new crime added by 1997 Criminal Code. The simple presentation of this crime in law causes many disputes and difficulties in judicial theory and practice. People always infer the meaning of this crime from its literal sense or correlative judicial explanations. The phenomenon of appeal,retrial and same acts with different decision repeatedly occur.Starting from analyzing the Case of Huang Changfu, this paper concludes three parts to study the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment. The first part describes the detail of the Case of Huang Changfu and analyzes the main questions involved in this case. The second part elaborates the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment and discusses the main questions involved in the Case of Huang Changfu. Firstly, the concept,constitution and the punishment of the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment are analyzed. Then this paper make a detailed analysis for the objective action,subject,subjective aspect and the understand for the "criminals".It also analyzes the behavior and status of person involved in the case of Huang Changfu. The third part affirm the legal nature of the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment and the case attribute of the Case of Huang Changfu through analyze the accomplishment standard of the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment and compare its difference with other similar crimes, such as Crime of Harboring and Covering up a criminal, the Crime of Engaging in Malpractices for Personal Gain, the Crime of Intentionally Reveal Nation's Secret. This paper analyzes the case of Huang Changfu who is suspected of help criminal escape from punishment and studies the disputes,difficulties and other correlative questions of the Crime of Helping Criminals Escape from Punishment in the ways of case research and comparison analysis, which is expected to benefit our legislative and judicial work in future in our country.