Investigation On Reasons For The Low Rate Of Witness Court Appearance And Research On The Countermeasures

After the amendment of "Criminal Procedure Law of People's Republic of China", our criminal trial absorbed the resistant factors from the adversary system. While the parties' burden of producing evidence is strengthened, the necessity and importance of the cross-examination and authentication of witnesses' testimony in court begins to emerge. However, the situation of its implementation today is very pessimistic. It's an acknowledged fact that it's difficult to see witnesses in court. The low court appearance rate of witness is affecting the intensity and effect of China's criminal trial system reform severely. It's imminent to solve this tough problem in China's criminal procedure reform.In order to explore the reasons for the low court appearance rate of witness, obtain the first-hand information and put forward practical and feasible countermeasures which can improve the rate, the author had made a further investigation on the common public, judicial personnel, lawyers in certain districts in Harbin. After that the author analyzed the investigation data systematically so as to summarize the specific reasons for the low court appearance rate of witness. Basing on the conclusion before and combining with the feedback of judges and prosecutors, the author put forward some suggestions on how to improve the situation of witness court appearance finally.This paper is divided into three parts:Part I: Summary of the Investigation Activities In this part, the author introduced the basic information such as investigation aim, investigation time, investigation sites, investigation objects, investigation methods and the result of questionnaires recovery briefly, in order to make a necessary preparation for the analysis below on the investigation results.Part II: Investigation Results and the Analysis on Those It's the most important part of this paper. In this part, the author represented the overall situation of witness court appearance in Harbin at first, then made a brief analysis on the importance and application of witness testimony in criminal trials basing on the investigation data. And then a systematic analysis and further study on the large number of data was done from three perspectives: common people, judicial organs and the legislation, in order to have the specific reasons for the low rate. At last, the author summarized the reasons.Part III: Suggestions Basing on the conclusion in the second part and combining with the feedback of judges and prosecutors, the author put forward some suggestions on how to improve the situation of witness court appearance during this part, looking forward to making contributions to the development and improvement of the criminal witness testifying system.