Collegiate Bench Mechanism

The collegiate bench appraisal is not only the continuation of the court hearing but also the premise of the judgment. Whether the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal is scientific or not directly decides final realization of the objective of criminal procedure and the degree of realization. So it becomes pretty important to establish a scientific and reasonable mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal. However, limited by backwards institutional building, improper operation and so on, the present mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal is still in an out-of-balance state, which not only causes a number of problems, but also brings some negative effect on implementing the reform of collegiate system in China. So this paper probes into the concrete measures to perfect the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal, based on carefully analyzing current conditions of our country.The whole text is divided into three parts except the introduction and the concluding remarks:Part one is the summarization about the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal. The paper points out that the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal has three elements: the subject of appraisal, the object of appraisal, the regulations of appraisal, based on defining the collegial system's meaning. The mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal has following several functions: making sure the fact of the cases more objective; identifying the standards in law; restricting the judges to abuse their authorities; strengthening the hearing. The principle of the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal mainly includes: (1) the principle of democratic appraisal; (2) the principle of secret appraisal; (3) the principle of centrality.Part two analyzes the legislation of our country at the present time from three aspects: the subject of appraisal, the object of appraisal, the regulations of appraisal, and points out the problems of the operating of the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal: (1) the object of appraisal is not the same as the judge who participates in the trial, and the member of the collegiate bench can't appraise independently. It mainly presents two aspects: the approval power of the president of court still exists; the judicial commission has been the excuse of the collegiate bench. (2) the appraisal has been in a mechanical way. It mainly manifests: the selection system of the chief judge has resulted in the rank of the collegiate bench; the case undertaker system has led to "one judge trailing, the other accompany"; the people jury has plays an association role in some court. (3) the regulations of the collegiate bench appraisal has been abandoned, as well as its width and depth is not enough. The reasons which caused above problems mainly include: the relevant legislations aren't conform to the judicial practice; the administrative management pattern is unreasonable; the jurisdiction is dispersed; the system of supervision is not perfect.Part three suggests some measures to perfect the mechanism of the collegiate bench appraisal. Firstly, ensure the collegiate bench appraise independently: (1) abolish the approval power of the president of court, and weaken his intervention on the concrete cases, while strengthening his judgment power, and realizing the transformation from hearing the case to trailing, from approving the case to summing up experience, carrying out judicial work guidance. (2) standardize the relation between the collegiate bench and the judicial committee, the relationship between them should be mentorship, not the leadership. It's a tendency to abolish the jurisdiction of the judicial committee, but at present, it's not the time to abolish it directly and completely. We should carry on reform from the following aspects: the first, restrict the range of the cases which are discussed by the judicial committee; the second, build the hearing system; the third, standard the operation of the judicial committee; the fourth, establish the system of the members of the collegiate bench attending the judicial committee. Secondly, guarantee the collegiate bench trail essentially: (1) grasp the location of the chief judge correctly. Clear that chief judge is one qualification, not administrative post, and define the relationship between the chief judge and other members. But, the system of selecting the chief judge is not accordance with the developed way of judges. (2) reform the case undertaker system. It's an unwritten system in our judicial practice, which weakened the function of the collegiate bench. The case undertaker should be located the "agent" or "trustee" of the collegiate bench, while changing its responsibility, abolishing the system of distribution and operation, and the system of the checking, which centralizes on the case undertaker. (3) perfect the people's jury system. Clear the range of the people's jury authority to trial; provide with the condition to perform its responsibility, introduce the system of indication by the judge. Reconstruct the responsibility system of the collegiate bench. Thirdly, clear the object of the appraisal, refine the rules of the appraisal, including: the rule of forbidding the forfeit, the rule of limiting the speech order, the rule of displaying the process of evidence determination, the rule of voting at one time, the rule of increasing the number of tickets. At last, the author suggests the complementary measures, namely ensuring the collegial panel master the information of the decision; reforming the verdict, attempting actively to open the minority opinions in the verdict; adopting the practice of professionalizing judges.