A Study On Criminal Responsibility Of Escape In Traffic Accident

With the accelerating process of modernization in China and also with the development of transportation, traffic accidents become more frequent. This situation leads to more escapes after traffic accidents and deaths due to these escapes, which greatly increases the difficulty of coping with these cases and also greatly threaten the safety of life and safety of possessions of citizens. Therefore, Chinese Crime Law in 1997 indicates that "Escape after traffic accident" and "The deaths due to the escapes" are both included as traffic accident crimes and also the aggravating circumstances themselves. Then in 2000, Supreme People’s Court gives detailed explanations to the two situations mentioned above in Interpretation of Trial Issues Arisen from Application of Law in Traffic Accident Crime Cases (Interpretation). However, there are contradictions between articles in Crime Law and in The Interpretation on the aspect of traffic accident crime subject, subjective elements, and accomplice and so on. Great disagreement also occurred between theories and practices performed by judicial department. So, the paper discusses the issues related to escape after traffic accident crime, hoping to benefit the judicial theories and practices.The paper is divided into four parts. Part one mainly discusses the definition of and subjective and objective elements of "escape after traffic accident" behavior. It’s an overview of the escape behavior. Part Two talks about the criminal responsibility of the "death caused by the escape". The criminal behavior of the escape is analyzed:on subjective aspect, whether it is negligence or is performed with indirect intention. And the victims refer to the ones before the escape. Also, the paper takes a deep look into common circumstances of the deaths caused by the escape after traffic accidents. The third part discusses the issues of accomplice and voluntary surrender of "escape after traffic accident". First, the validity conditions of the voluntary surrender are analyzed. Then, lacking theories for Accomplice was analyzed mainly according to the basic principles of Joint Negligence, leading to the conclusion that a new charge should be created to compensate for the loophole of crime law under great urgency. Part Four is mainly about the suggestions to help complete the law for "escape after traffic accident" behavior. And a new charge named "Death caused by escape after traffic accident" was suggested after analyzing. The characteristics of this crime are also discussed, trying to contribute to the mature of the crime law. At last, some issues about the judicial process regarding to this crimes are presented.