Study Of Criminal Legal Aid System

The system of Criminal Legal Aid (CLA) is stipulated by article 34 of "the Code of Criminal Procedure Law" (CCPL) of China, as well as "the Regulation of Legal Aid" made by the State Council. This system has great positive effect by maintaining the justice of judiciary, promoting the balance between the prosecution and the defendant(s) and defending the legal rights of the defendant(s). But there are still some predicaments in fact. The first one is the limitation of the object receiving Criminal Legal Aid. The Criminal Legal Aid does not exit in the process of investigation and prosecution according article 34 of the CCPL. It is not enough for protecting the legal rights of the defendant(s) that CLA only exit in the process of trial. The second one is that the defendant(s) in poor cannot get enough legal aid. Although it is not inevitable that the poor should have the right of receiving legal aid according article 34 of the CCPL, we should be aware that if we do not supply the poor, who account for a great part of criminals, with some necessary legal aid, they might be disappointed with our judiciary system. The third one is the limitation of CLA made by the criminal argument system, those limitations have direct effect on the result of CLA. The fourth predicament is that the injured party is not involved in the object of CLA, while they may be in greater need of legal aid than the defendant(s). The last problem is that the sense of responsibility of lawyers in the process of CLA should be strengthened to guarantee the quality of the suit procedure.The reason of these problems are as follows: firstly, the sense of rights and the awareness of the law is still poor in our society so that the legal aid system is not urgently needed by our people;secondly, the attorney system is still not developed, that makes legal aid system, which depends on the attorney system, can not get its essential position it should have;thirdly, the power of litigation is far formidable for a litigant or a lawyer to play their part in the judge decision process, and that also makes the function of CLA not recognized by our government and the whole society, and therefore it cannot get its legal position and the security of expenses. All these facts result in the slowly development of CLA.It is not a very long time since the CLA system been established in China and just because of that we do not have much experience. This article try to give some ideas of thereformation of CLA system of China on the basis of comparative research: (1) to build an fore-trial legal aid system;(2) to supply the poor with necessary CLA;(3) to maturity our legal aid system for the injured party;(4) to stipulate forced pleading system in CLA;(5) to establish some punish system to regulate the CLA behavior;(6) to improve the position of attorney, at the same time, to enhance the function of the professional ethics of attorney;and (7) to solve the problem of the shortage of the funds for legal aid.