Confession System Study

"Leniency to confessors" is drawn into The Eighth Amendment of Criminal Law, which marks the further improvement of our sentencing system and also leads to a step forward for China’s course of the government by law. However, this step doesn’t go that far as people have expected, because this legislation only brings a part of confessions into the criminal law while the rest are placed in an awkward predicament. The complete confession means that after the offender is passively brought to justice, he makes a truthful confession about his criminal information already been mastered by judicial office or about the same kinds of criminal behavior yet not been mastered by judicial office within a statutory period. But The Eighth Amendment of Criminal Law restricts the confessors to the "criminal suspects". Some scholars say this is out of the consideration to save judicial resources, because only the confessions made before trials have substantive meanings. However, it ignores the relationship between efficiency and justice. Judicial efficiency is of great importance, but when it is in conflict with justice, justice should be put on the priority. In order to better protect the rights of criminal suspects, the confessors should apparently be defined as "offenders."Confession has a long-standing history in China, and the confession system is not taken into the criminal law in a day. From the criminal policy of “Leniency to confessors, severity to refuses” to the confession clauses recognized by the criminal law, the confession system has lived through 55-year development. In these 55 years, the criminal policy of “Leniency to confessors, severity to refuses” has once played a positive role, but with the constant development of domestic construction of the government by law, it gradually remains out of touch with the actual conditions. “Leniency to confessors, severity to refuses” has gradually become a measure of tortures, so it confronts with many difficulties to perform its real functions. If confession wants to continue to exist, it must experience a transformation, otherwise, it’s doomed to deconstruct in the future—bringing confession system into the criminal law is imperative.When taking the confession system into the criminal law, the lawmakers, with fine expectations, wish to improve the judicial benefits and litigation efficiency, protect the rights of criminal suspects, as well as achieve the purpose of specially preventing punishments. Unfortunately, there always exists a wide gap between the practice and ideal--- the current situation of implementing the confession clauses is not satisfactory. After the confession system is legislated, the utilization of confession clauses has been greatly lifted in the next two years. However, when the utilization rate of it exceeds 45%, it begins to slow down its rising momentum; when the rate reaches to 52%, the utilization of confession clauses meets the bottleneck. The confession clauses lack the driving force for its utilization and promotion. The fundamental reason lies in the imperfection of legislation---there exist ambiguities in the aspects of confessors, confession time, forms of bringing to justice, truthful confession, identification procedures of confession and so on. The direct reason rests in the judicial offices’ “omission” towards confession clauses.In order to change the above situations, the author suggests that in the substantive laws, the “confession system” can be listed as a separate article and set down as an independent institution having the equal status with surrender and meritorious performance, so as to achieve the integrity of confession system in the criminal law. In the procedural laws, the judicial identification procedures matching with the confession system can be established, so as to prevent the situation where the investigative authorities consider it as a confession while the courts affirm it’s not. Meanwhile, before the amendment of legislation, a matched judicial explanation should be introduced in a judicial manner, which can conduct detailed provisions on the ambiguities of confession system and make the contents of confession system more substantial, reasonable and scientific. For instance, in the confession clauses of The Eighth Amendment of Criminal Law, the “criminal suspects” should be the initial identity of confessors rather than the unique identity, and the confession time should not be confined. In addition, when putting the confession system into practice, the judicial personnel should adhere to the relative tolerant principle and the defendant-oriented principle. Only by doing this can the judicial personnel make a correct application rather than just “utilization” of the confession clauses.