Improvement And Application Of The Proof Standard Of Criminal Trial

Proof standard of criminal trial is the statutory standard or extent that the prosecuted facts in issue should be reached by judges or jury' conviction through whole competence of evidence, while courts render judgments to decide whether the defendants be guilty or innocent, or the crime be grave or minor, or convicted of this crime or the other. The theory on proof standard of criminal trial could be divided into two styles, Objective Truth Theory and Legal Truth Theory, through whether the evidenced facts could correctly reflect the objective truth, and by the different way and the different extent of that the evidenced facts reflect the objective truth. There are mainly two typical styles of proof standard, which are "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" of the Case Law system and "Innermost Being Surety" of the Continent Law system, the both styles of the proof standard are subjective, Chinese criminal procedure law adopts the proof standard of "Evidence be Reliable and Sufficient", which is objective style of proof standard. Under the influence of various factors, such as legal system,social culture,political backgrounds and so on, there often exist some problems, such as that courts commonly render guilty judgments for the defendants for whom there is no sufficient evidence to prove guilty; the courts directly change the prosecuted crime name without noticing the Procuratorate and defendants while they render guilty judgment; it is defective of the procedural rules for application of law and decision of the punishment; which lead to the objective phenomenon that the proof standard be lowered, or be evaded or abused in the course of courts applying proof standard.The proof standards are different at the different criminal procedural stages because of different stages having their own different tasks, which constitute the layered proof standard system. The proof standards are also different because of the different crimes having their own formation of crime, which constitutes multiplex proof standard system. Chinese style of proof standard system is constituted by combining the general proof standard of "Evidence be Reliable and Sufficient" with the layered proof standard and multiplex proof standard. Chinese criminal procedure law adopts the proof way of "dual checking", which is the result of the strong influence of the following factors: the separation of hearing of a case and rendering a judgment,the current quality of the whole judge group,indirect and clerical trial way instead of the direct and speech way,repeat trials of facts of a case which require the case showing the character of examinable and checkable in writing. Courts and judges are difficult to really independently excise judicial power because of the defection of the courts' inner independent mechanism and the history of judicial power being dependent and administered. It is necessary for improve the proof standard of criminal trial to undertake from the following three aspects, to improve the evidence judging system,to carry out the criminal system of "strictness and flexibility interplaying",to improve the regulatory free evaluation system. The goal that the verification of the case facts should be really based on the rational basis of the evidences could be reached through improving the evidence judging system. "Strictness and flexibility interplaying" criminal policy provides the guideline and supports for the correct and flexible application of proof standard in the course of the application of the law and decision of punishment. It is necessary to regulate judge's discretion in the course of application of proof standard, through establishing the system of regulatory free evaluation system, which includes inner system and outer system. Inner system is that judge should follow the common sense and logical rules in deciding the competence and ability of evidence, and law directly confirms the competence and ability of certain evidence in some special circumstances, to exclude the judge's power of free evaluation in whether accepting the evidence or not. Outer system includes trial in public,appeal system,independence and neutralization of judicial power, and so on.