Procuratorate Sentencing Recommendation System

In judicial practice, sentencing isn't highly valued compared with conviction, the circumstance, working hard on conviction and sentencing with ease, is of common occurrence, as frequently happen out-of-balance and rigid sentencing. In order to standardize the sentencing system and improve the previous sentencing proceeding, on the basis of the experience obtained from long-term experiments and theoretical studies the Supreme People's Court established a relatively independent sentencing proceeding and worked out the specific sentencing guideline, which incorporated the sentencing proceeding into the court proceedings and provided the unified sentencing rules for judges. As the most important part of the reform of sentencing proceeding, the system of prosecutorial sentencing suggestion has arouse extensive attention. through analyzing and evaluating the systems of foreign countries and Taiwan Area, and integrating the pilot programs of sentencing proceeding in China, this article seeks to put forward recommendations on establishment and improvement of our own system of sentencing suggestion. This article is divided into six parts, as follows:The first part, combining with the modification of the Criminal Procedural Law and the problems about sentencing existing in present judicial practice, introduces the background over the establishment of the system of sentencing proceeding, and makes clear the possibility and necessity of the system.The second part analyzes the system of sentencing proceeding in Anglo-American legal system, continental legal system and Taiwan Area in order to gain the experiences for the establishment of our own system.The third part introduces and summarizes the pilot programs exploring the system of sentencing proceeding; on that basis, the experiences gained from the pilot programs is of importance to improve our own system of sentencing suggestion.The forth part describes the specific proceeding of our own system of sentencing suggestion, including the scope of application, the form, method and the stage in which sentencing suggestion is brought, and how to change the proceeding.The fifth part introduces the other systems related to the system of sentencing suggestion. The system of prosecutorial sentencing suggestion is not an isolated system, in order to ensure that the system to achieve the greatest value, therefore the system of justifying the sentencing, the system of the defendant and his or her lawyer defending against the sentencing suggestion, the system of reporting the information about sentencing and other related support systems should also be synchronized.The sixth part generalizes the difficulties encountering in the reform of sentencing proceeding and points out the relative solution to the problems. So far, the reform of sentencing proceeding has yielded some results, but subsequently some difficult points have arisen, for example, how to design the proceeding in which the defendant doesn't plea guilty, the system of disclosure of evidence, the standard of proof about sentencing fact. In this part, those difficult points are analyzed and summarized, and the corresponding idea of reform is put forward.