Empirical Research On The Simplified Trial For Criminal Common Procedure Of China

Facing the heavy burden of fast-increasing cases and inefficiency application of criminal summary procedure, the simplified trial for criminal common procedure is an approach, invented by Chinese courts themselves, to enhance the procedural efficiency through streamlining some parts of common trial steps. Via our empirical research results, it can be concluded that simplifying the trial steps greatly lightens the burden of judges in the common procedure indeed, and realize the goals of efficiency that the court wants, obviously saving the time consumed in court trial. So this reform is welcomed warmly by numerous courts as soon as its appearance. However, the most important connotation of justice is justness rather than efficiency, so any innovation measures in the name of efficiency are bound to be doubtful in its validity and legitimacy. And it is worrying whether the simplified trial can ensure the equality or not.By investigating the criminal procedure of the developed country governed by law, we can see that they are all pursuing efficiency through simplifying the procedure on the very basis of sufficient guarantees for justice, originated from complicated common procedure. That kind of efficiency reform carried on the premise that the rights of accused is fully got and ensured. But Chinese criminal judicial process mainly pursues one kind of efficiency for state power's convenient exercising on the whole, the integrality and complexity of its procedure can't accord with the modern judicial requisition for fairness far, especially lacking in the element of the guarantees for the rights of the accused. So Chinese criminal process reform must take the way that improves the justness and efficiency at the same time, pursuing the efficiency on the basis of ensuring the rights.Unfortunately, the simplified trial for criminal common procedure in this respect has major defects. It pursues the efficiency that bases on the structure of state-power exercising system, and just meets the courts' hope to enhance the efficiency of dealing cases, through simplifying the procedure further, in fact cutting down the defendants' rights further. In the investigation, we can find that, when defendants couldn't freely have rights to choose procedure actually, confession's voluntariness is difficult to be proved, and the defendants are lacking in counsels' effective help, the simplified trial's improvement in efficiency is in the cost of the sacrificing the defendants' rights and the judgments' justness. Then it commits a serious threat to the whole Chinese criminal judicial system reform in the direction of "due process" and has destroyed the value orientation to ensuring fairness of the common procedure itself. And influenced by greater surroundings, the meaning only simplifying the court trial procedure to save court's trial time is quite limited to improve the whole criminal procedure's efficiency.The improvement of China's criminal justice efficiency does not lie in how to simplify the common procedure, but how to effectively use existing summary procedure and open other simplified case-dealing ways, because common procedure's own value determine that it cannot be simplified.