On The Transformation Of Disciplinary Supervision Evidence Into Criminal Evidence

The discipline examination and supervision office plays a core leading role in China's anti-corruption system. It's most powerful weapon against corruption is evidence. According to regulations, they transfer criminality-involved cases to law enforcement office. In this process the disciplinary supervision evidence converted into criminal evidence. The criminal litigation law in effect does not regulate this issue, and very few has made deep research on it. There are a lot of similarities between disciplinary supervision evidence and criminal evidence, such as their definitions and classifications, but they differs to each other in principal, procedure and method of collecting evidence, testifying object, testifying task and application way. Due to its collecting principal not in compliance with criminal litigation law, in extended sense, supervisory testimony is illegal criminal evidence. But in narrow sense, it is not. Disciplinary supervisors are not witnesses to the case, therefore the evidence they collect is a kind of hearsay to justice administrators. The nature of the supervisory evidence and the coherence of its testifying object to criminal evidence decide that it is feasible to transform the first into the latter. There is some legal ground for it. This kind of transformation is necessary, due to the innate difference between disciplinary punishment and criminal punishment and the fact that evidence can not regenerated, in order to avoid confession withdrawal and to improve litigation efficiency. However, in the judicatory practice, there are a few obstacles for the evidence transformation. They are mainly as follows: there is no legal support. It conflicts with the current litigation law in aspects of principal of collecting testimony, responsibility to inform false testimony, obtainment of attorney's defend. The measures of"Two Appointed"and"Two Designated"that the disciplinary supervisory office take is lack of legal grounds. The supervisory staff are lag behind law enforcement staff in profession level. In spite of these unfavorable factors, there are ways to remove these obstacles by, for example, improving legislation and strengthen management. Because China runs the unique system that the CPC's disciplinary supervision body and the government disciplinary supervision body working under the same roof, it is not possible to learn from other countries in the evidence conversion. The pre-condition for the evidence conversion is that the evidence must be true and co-related. Meanwhile, attention should be paid to duty criminality, and balance be kept between punishing criminality and protecting human rights, in order to maximize social interests. In the process of evidence transformation, we must stick to the following principles: overall translation principle, the best testimony principle, principle of eliminating illegal supervisory evidence, and principle of free judge. Through strict examination and judgment by law enforcement staff, practical evidence can be converted. Testimony can not be taken as accusation evidence to testify criminality, but in the circumstance of confession withdrawal or counterevidence, it can be converted to impeaching evidence to question the testimony made after. Illegally obtained testimony can not be converted into criminal evidence. It can be used for clue only. Appraisals issued by legal appraisers is convertible, otherwise a new appraisal should be issued according to law. The evidence collected from the joint work of disciplinary supervisors and judicatory office, beyond the rights they are authorized. In special circumstances, disciplinary supervisors may appear in court for testimony. A certain procedure and requirement must be followed in the process of evidence transformation. Cases transferred from disciplinary office must be in compliance with criminal register standards, meanwhile should only be transferred to the law enforcement office with the correspondent jurisdiction right. The procedure of case hand over and take over must be followed. They should assign examiners to differentiate evidences one by one, ask related persons to identify. After questioning and interrogating them, making analysis and judgement, they decide whether to register the criminal case or not. They should also inform the disciplinary supervision office the final result.