Research On Victim's Condonation

In the modern theory of criminal law, it is a general rule that the victim's post factum can not be the ground for elimination of crime. The American scholars usually use"victim's condonation"to define the victim's content after action. It has a great impact on the practice of criminal justice, though it can not be used as a defensive matter except some special situations. In our country, the criminal law does not give a clear definition to the victim's condonation, and so few people have done research on this issue. In the practice of criminal justice, there are different views on the issue that whether and how we should adopt the victim's suggestion. In order to make up of this legislative flaw and to give the victim's condonation the corresponding legal status, the article will do systematic research on it.This article is composed of five parts. The first part will propose the major issues discussed in the later parts through the introduction of a few representative cases that have the victim's condonation plot, and analyze the conception of the victim's condonation. The second part will do some research on the following issues: the nature of the victim's condonation in private prosecution case, the impact on indictment cases, and the impact on the discretion of punishment. The third part will do analytic demonstration on the rationality of the impact that the victim's condonation have on the sentencing, from four angles which are the use of the state's penalty power, the general theory of criminal law, the related theory of criminal law, and its practical impact to criminal justice. The forth part will give the individual suggestion to the issues that need be specially emphasized, after doing some discussion on them. In the last part, this article will suggest that we should continue to adopt VOM in minor cases and introduce the victim impact statement system into our country, on the basis of the reason analysis of the issue that we paid insufficient attention to the attitude of the victim in our legislative and judicial practice, so that the victim's condonation can play a greater role in the conviction and sentencing.In short, this article proposes that the victim's condonation can be the ground for elimination of crime in the case of private prosecution, it can be the discretionary circumstance of sentencing in indictable cases, and this plot even can affect the determination of the action's quality in special situations the judicial interpretation regulate. This is an inevitable requirement of the use of penalty power along with its development. It is also in line with the general principles of criminal Law, and it is bound to have a great impact on the building of the harmonious Justice.