Harmless Error Rule Of U.S. Appeal Procedure And Its Reference

In recent years, for how to deal with trial court's procedural errors in the appeal proceedings, many scholars put forwards their views. But most share the view that any procedural errors should lead to the trial null and void and be remanded cassation. This view has some truth to help China to establish the concept of procedural justice. But due to out of our local environment, this view is difficult to operate and lack of feasibility in judicial practice. This article introduces harmless error rule of the United States by analytic and comparative methods and hopes to inspire the reform of the appeal procedure and promote the appeal procedure to safeguard substantive justice and procedural justice.This paper approaches the issue by four steps as follows:The first part details harmless error rule of the United States. Harmless error rule stems from the principle that remedies should be roughly proportional to the injury caused by the violation. At present, harmless error rule applies to all of the statutory law errors and trial errors within constitutional errors, except for the structural errors. In the judicial practice of the United States, harmless error rule has two main criteria: guilt-based approach and effect-on-the-verdict approach which is more popular. Both of harmless error rule and obvious error rule are very important in U.S. appeal procedure, but there are many differences between them, such as the precondition, who bear the burden of proof and other aspects. Why the United States, that advocate procedural justice, has created harmless error rule is mainly based on the following reasons: 1. Due to the limitation of legislation and the judiciary, the occurrence of procedural errors are inevitable; 2. It can safeguard the fundamental values of criminal procedure--substantive justice and make up for the defect that in the past the court safeguard procedural justice at the expense of substantive justice; 3. For litigation economy; 4. To maintain judicial independence.The second part demonstrates the significance of harmless error rule of the United.States. Although some people doubt harmless error rule in the United States, its positive significance is greater,such as: 1. Harmless error rule, which sets out from the criminal proceedings and bases on the appeal procedure, rationalizes the relationship of substantive justice and procedural justice in U.S. criminal proceedings by stressed substantive justice in the appeal procedure; 2. According to harmless error rule, the court of appeal can take different approaches to the different types of procedural errors, rather than reversing and remanding all sentence. And it can avoid the cases circulating in the courts. It saves litigation costs, improves the efficiency of the proceedings and guarantees the realization of justice timely; 3. Harmless error rule raises the judicial authority and credibility of justice by ensuring the fairness of the outcome and process and safeguarding the stability of the trial results; 4. Harmless error rule can guarantee that the defendants are responsible for their crimes and sanction the person with illegal conduct as well by resorting to civil tort action and internal disciplinary system and so on. This reflects the principle of bearing responsibility solely for one's own crime. This rule requires that only the procedural errors that affect the substantial rights of the accused or the correctness of the case's result can lead to overturn the original verdict. It applies the principle of suiting punishment to crime in the area of criminal proceedings and satisfies the requirement that the sanctions should fit into the procedural error.The third part argues about the necessity and feasibility of construction of harmless error rule in China. If China establishes harmless error rule, we can end the disordered state of assessment of procedural errors and the judicial officers have regulations to abide by. And also we can avoid hypercorrection and prevent to make detours in the process of building up procedural justice. On the other hand, harmless error rule will effectively advance procedure to constructe the procedure sanctions regime and contribute to the realization of procedural justice in China. At present, the article 191 and other provisions of China Criminal Procedure Law embody the spirit of harmless error rule. The serious situation of crime and the traditional judicial culture that focuses on substantive justice set the stage for the construction of harmless error rule.The fourth part does research in how to constructe harmless error rule in China. We should specify the censored objects by harmless error rule, legal standard of review, subject of proof and so on. The internal disciplinary system, civil tort action system and criminal prosecution system should also be establishment to ensure the implementation of harmless error rule smoothly.