A Study On Some Issues In Judicial Recognition Of Confession-to-Justice

The system of confession-to-justice is an important system of penalties provided by the criminal law in our country, is the specific and legal manifestation of the basic criminal policies which combines punishment with leniency, and it has a long history in China, which was once considered as a feature of Chinese law system; There are also special provisions on confession-to-justice in foreign criminal laws, which have received great attention from the majority of countries, and become a very important system of penalties for discretion in Chinese and foreign criminal law systems. System of confession-to-justice is a scientific summary and creation of experience of the ruling class in their long-term fight against crimes, and it is of great significance and value of disintegrating the criminal forces, encouraging criminals to repent and turn over a new leaf, cracking a criminal case rapidly, saving judicial resources, improving judicial efficiency, and achieving general prevention and special prevention to get a more and accurate understanding and proper application of the system.Relatively speaking, there are quite a lot of research and writing on the confession-to-justice issues, especially for the pure research articles on the constitutive elements of confession-to-justice. The writer, as a justice practitioner, conducts a discussion mainly targeted at those controversial issues in judicial recognition of confession-to-justice encountered in practice.The first part is the overview of system of confession-to-justice. Based on the provisions on confession-to-justice in China's criminal law and judicial interpretation, the confession-to-justice should refer to the behavior to surrender voluntarily within the legal time limit, and make a true statement of their crimes, or the behavior that a criminal who has been deprived of their liberty makes an honest confession to the judiciary of other crimes that beyond what they have mastered. The writer explores the nature of confession-to-justice from different perspectives based on current different perceptions of the academic, and believes that the essence of confession-to-justice is to confess the crimes truthfully and initiatively, but not to repent. Finally, it is the discussion about the basis for the lenient punishment of system of confession-to-justice, which thinks that firstly, the reduction of personal dangerousness realizes the need for the purpose of punishment, and the general prevention and special prevention of penalty will be transformed into positive effects of the Penal Code. Secondly, economical efficiency of judicial cost realizes the need for the purpose of utilitarian, and curbs crimes to the utmost at a minimum cost.The second part is about the conditions of confession-to-justice. First of all, the confession-to-justice is divided into general confession-to-justice and quasi-confession-to-justice in accordance with general principles and judicial interpretation of the Criminal Code. Specifically, general confession-to-justice depends on the behavior of the criminals to initiatively give them up to judicial authority or other organizations and individuals that are able to turn to be empowered authorities eventually, and make an initiative statement of their basic criminal behavior before the first instance judgment. Quasi-confession-to -justice depends on the behavior of the criminal suspects who have been taken compulsory measures, defendants and criminals detained according to law, to give a statement of truthful testimony as a confession and of other crimes that are of the same kind of different kinds that the judiciary has not yet acquired. The elements of general confession-to-justice are voluntary surrender and truthful confession respectively. The voluntary surrender has been discussed from surrender objects, surrender means, surrender time, and surrender intention, which is to say that voluntary surrender must occur after the criminal committing a crime but before being brought to justice, and there are different ways of surrender, and the surrender object refers to related authorities and individuals. Surrender should be initiative and this paper gives answers to the question whether it has been recognized as voluntary surrender in practice. The writer also gives a more detailed explanation of the element of truthful confession from honest, initiatively, and crime. As long as criminal suspects confess all committed crimes on the basis of objective facts, not reduce or expand the facts, should it be deemed to be truthful testimony. As for the elements of quasi-confession-to-justice, the subject can only be the criminal suspects who have been taken compulsory measures, defendants and criminals who are serving sentences. The objective conditions only concludes making a statement of other crimes that haven't been mastered by the judiciary, and how to understand the judiciary, haven't been mastered, other crimes are discussed in this paper. The paper thinks that it is more in line with the legislative intent to have a narrow understanding of the judiciary in this provision. So, here's judiciary should refer to the judiciary to deal specifically with the case. In order to recognize with precision the meaning of haven't been mastered, this paper does a comparison between the three levels that are never mastered, unidentified and unsuspected. Although it is not comprehensive of the requirement of the judicial interpretation on the understanding of other crimes, after all there is the force of law, and before changes are made, practicing departments still have to deal with confession-to-justice or extra crimes in strict accordance with the provisions in the current judicial interpretation, so that to facilitate the unity of the rule of law. In terms of the conditions of subject and object, it rationalizes the relationships between general confession-to-justice and quasi-confession-to-justice, which is to change the parallel relationship into a subordination relationship. The quasi-confession-to-justice is only the indicative provisions based on the needs of practice, the others not belonging to quasi-confession-to-justice should be recognized as a general confession-to-justice. At the same time, it broadens the interpretation to the scope of voluntary surrender, that as long as the perpetrator raises definite objections and resistance during the confession-to-justice accompanied by other people and the confession-to-justice delivered by other people, does it correspond with the constitutive requirements of confession-to-justice, which would address some cases which are not quasi-confession-to-justice but there are still certain obstacles to be identified as general confession-to-justice.The third part is about several kinds of problems existing in judicial recognition of confession-to-justice in practice, and it discusses especially on some controversial issues, including confession-to-justice of suspicious-looking type, confession-to-justice to confess honestly of crimes after being summoned for questioning, confession-to-justice that accepting units and individuals do not transfer the case to the judiciary, voluntary confession to units and individuals out of the judicial interpretation, voluntary confession that perpetrators did not escape after committing a crime or oppose others to call the police, voluntary confession in cases that perpetrators being captured in the rescue operation of the wounded or property, voluntary confession in which that perpetrators did not know that it has constituted a crime or was not sure whether the conduct is illegal, confession-to-justice that there is repetition of the perpetrator's statements in judicial process, confession-to-justice that the perpetrator'informs the judicial authority through telecommunications, and confess to justice after giving him up, confession-to-justice with destruction of evidence, and confession-to-justice of crimes of possession. To the above circumstances, this paper makes an analysis on the issues whether the surrender is initiative or whether it truthfully confessed his crime, conducts a contrast of the reasons for recognizing confession-to-justice or not, absorbs the reasons in line with the constitutive requirements of confession-to-justice, and eventually provides a concluding observation on recognizing confession-to-justice or not, in a hope of providing a little information and benefits for the questions whether it should be recognized as confession-to-justice or not in the above situations in the judicial practice.In short, system of confession-to-justice is an important system of penalties for discretion concerned with the humanity of penalty and the importance of crime prevention in the criminal law, and to develop and improve the legislation and justice of the system of confession-to-justice depends on the continual in-depth exploration of the theorists on the criminal law.