Research On The System Of Criminal Trial Grade

The criminal adjudication-grade system refers to a legal judicial system whereby the judicial organs designated by legislation are divided into several levels in a static state and in a dynamic state the criminal cases are tried legally effective after hearing several levels of trial. At present, the four-level and second-instance final appeal system is exercised in China. That is, a case comes to the end after two trials given by the courts of two levels. There are three reasons for the system(the court of second instance is the court of last instance). First, the system suits the national conditions. Second, the higher court supervises the lower court so as to ensure the case trial impartial. Third, there is the relatively perfect criminal proceeding system in our country so that we can guarantee the quality of handling cases.With the development of reform and opening-up, the politics, economy, culture and other fields in China have made great progress and our national conditions have completely changed. The disadvantage of the four-level and second-instance final appeal system is that the mere formality of the second trial, the frequent starting of the retrial and the vacancy of the death penalty review result in the foundation of the system-the supervisory relationship ensures the quality of handling cases-becoming empty talk. The underlying reason for that makes me think about the system of Judicial Committee. We can say that the present Judicial Committee system has destroyed the value of adjudication-grade system—procedural justice. In short, it is difficult for the current adjudication-grade system to meet people's demands for the justice. Having examined the related legislative requirements and system-operating conditions of the western countries with adequate legal system, I put forward the idea of establishing the limited final-third-trial system on the base of absorbing and learning from the advanced foreign legislation. To be specific, it is the system of four-level and second-instance final appeal by which two appeals are given to some cases and the third trial, as the legal trial, is not brought before the court except the cases of the death penalty. The final-third-trial system can reform the existing system limitedly. That is to say the function must be redesigned under the same hierarchy and separated from the local personnel and finance. As for the division of the courts'function, the Supreme People'Court and the Higher People's Court should liberate themselves from the fetter of the first trial, and the death penalty review should be included into the adjudication-grade system of the final third trial.The final third trial system may have many obstacles, so it is difficult for us to achieve the intended purpose. However we can not move back because of the difficulty of the reform. Of course, the constitutional theory and the procedural justice theory offer an important theoretical basis for the reform of the criminal adjudication-grade system which is a systematic project. We should not take stop-gap measures but to modify the related system besides the reform of the criminal adjudication-grade system itself. Only in this way can we succeed.