On Withdrawn Confession

In current judicial practice, the popularity and high rates of withdrawn confession has become a prominent problem. For the efficiency of the proceedings and fighting against crime, or to conceal illegal evidence and some other ugly phenomena in justice, judicial officers will often ignore withdrawn confession. This greatly undermines our judicial impartiality and judicial authority.Punishing crime and the protection of human rights are essential values of our modern criminal procedure. The revised Code of Criminal Procedure Article 12 states: according to the law, without a court judgment against any person, no one shall be determined guilty, so at this point, the principle of Presumption of Innocence to the criminal level has been established. However, because of our lack of principle of the right against Self-Incrimination and related system, at the same time, the Code of Criminal Procedure Section 93 provides that suspects, accused of investigators question, are obliged to give truthful answer, which provides an opportunity to extract confessions. There is intrinsic link between forcing confession and withdrawing confession.In the criminal proceeding in foreign countries with a higher degree of rule of law, criminal suspects and accused persons have the privilege of the right against self-incrimination. Suspects and the accused have the right to refuse to answer interrogations. Neither denied nor confirmed can have a real sense of the legal consequences. Silence can confront compulsory questioning and the rule of Probable Statement can guarantee the statement completely voluntary and reliability. Since people normally think of innocence will never be self-called crimes themselves under adverse circumstances, in this context, once the suspects or the accused made statements guilty in the trial, they generally not randomly withdraw the confession. Law gives suspects (the defendant) the Right, at the same time means that he once abandoned the right, they should assume the obligation to determining the statements, silence excludes withdrawn confession. Compare with international and domestic criminal justice system and the practice, this analysis of the topic of character, and causes and related issues that should be explored, and makes some revisions.The chapter one discuses the concept and the character of the topic, which includes subject, conditions, time, content and legal nature. The chapter two makes extraterritorial legal inspection on the topic and have a conclusion that the principle of the Presumption of Innocence can restrain withdrawn confession. The principle avoids subsequent confession by the suspect being forced to answer for questioning. Silence and Probable Statement guarantee the effect of Presumption of Innocence. Silence can confront compulsory question, Probable Statement can completely guarantee the person's answer is reliable and voluntary.The chapter three makes a domestic inspection on the topic, analyzes the reasons why the topic is a popular phenomena.The chapter four analyzes causes and brings up countermeasures from practice and theory range from putting on record to trial. The critical countermeasures are: improving the quality of investigators, developing interrogating skills, familiar with suspect's psychology.The chapter five mainly discusses how to deal with withdrawn confession in trial. Withdrawn confession is often induced by illegal procedural matters. Procedural matters are completely different from substantive matters on standard of proof, burden of proof, at the same time, the differences between procedural illegality and procedural flaw must be realized and be given different countermeasures.The chapter six discusses the relationship between withdrawn confession and right of silence and voluntary surrender.