On The Influence Of Network Public Opinion On Fair Sentencing

Measurement of penalty, in another word, in line with penal stipulation, People’s Court’s measurement of variety of criminal penalty with criminal facts affirmed. Such as to sentence the defendant penalty or not, what kind of penalty, or multiple criminal penalty. Justice is the core value appeal of penalty measurement. Inequitable measurement will seriously injure the honor of Judicial, and lose people’s confidenceand belief in Judicial Office. Different social groups from different perspective have different standards of penalty measurement being justice or not. Different modes of thinking lead to different standards of penalty measurement between legal profession and the public. And this DIFFERENCE will be emerged as the format of strained relations between the will of people and Judicial Office on the just penalty measurement problem. Online public opinion is a new expression form and gradually grows up to a major form under the well-developed mobile internet condition. Being different from traditional will of people, online public opinion, however, possesses the features of public opinion like universality, spontaneity, complexity, morality, non-rationality and changeability. Still, online public opinion also has its own features, such as directness of expression, virtuality of the subject, non-rationality of value judgment, derivability and distortion during expression. For the past few years, online public opinion has mastered the final penalty measurement for the defendant. Netizen’s highly attention to hot cases comes from media focus, non-trust in Judicial Office and vigilante tendency. Theoretical cycle holds different points of views on the relation between online opinion and just measurement of penalty. He Bing tends to support the participation of people’s will in Judicial, while Yongkun Zhou, Wanhuai Sun and other men of law have negative attitude, which expresses that Law Man is supposed to stick to their faith in Law, and keep Law as the only meta-rule of judgment. During judicial practice, it is not difficult to find the synergistic relation between online opinion and judges’measurement via some hot cases analysis. In the end, this RELATION, reflected online public opinion’s enormous effect on penalty measurement, which was, in most cases, negative. In Changkui Li Case, Yunnan Provincial High Court changed original sentence into death penalty under the pressure of online public opinion. From the points of law, this court decision strongly disagreed with Legal Provisions, and derogated the res judicata of criminal judgment and the judge’s discretionary powerat the meantime. BUT, this court decision had stirred up a "netizen carnival". When people get a closer look at this online carnival, it was not hard to see the irrational populism, what is worse, some chance to intervene penalty measurement by manipulating online public opinion. This is the far-reaching endanger to penalty measurement justice. I think to guarantee the penalty measurement justice; we have to exclude the disturbancefrom onlinepublic opinion according to the irrational feature and penalty measurement judicial independence. On one hand, the irrational feature is reflected in serious populism of its content and its easily-manipulated expression. On the other hand, the penalty measurement justice is born of criminal judicialuncompromising and legal professional itself. And I also think that that major measure of excluding the disturbance of online public opinion lies in two aspects; On one hand, make the online public decision on circumstances of sentencing legal, quantization and standardization, in case the judge yield to online public opinion and make an unjust court decision; On the other hand, standard litigant participants’behavior, in case they instigate netizen’s opinion during lawsuit and force the judge making unjust penaltymeasurement. And to strictly control over the online public intervene in measurement of penalty from the source of information.