The Study Of The Character Evidence Rule

Character evidence rules were originated from Anglo-American law system, and were regarded as one of the basic evidence rules in the criminal justice of the United States and the United Kingdom for a long time. The function of character evidence rules is to avoid those negative impacts that produced by the prejudice in the criminal progress, and to improve the accuracy of trial. With regarding to the issue of applying the character evidence rules, the countries of common law system have formulated detailed and complete rules for directing the judicial practice. The dissertation specifically analyzed the character evidence rules in the statute law and the case law of Anglo-American law countries, and posed the idea of establishing Chinese character evidence rules by carding those basic theories of the Anglo-American evidence law.The dissertation was made up of four sections excepting introduction.The first section analyzed the basic conceptions of character evidence. The section firstly defined the word of "character" in the text of evidence law, and pointed out the properties of character——uniqueness, accumulation and stability. Secondly, the section defined the conception of "character evidence" in a way of population and analyzed the conception. Furthermore, this section classified the character evidences according different criteria. According the contents, character evidences can be classified into good character evidence and bad character evidence. According the forms of expression, the evidences can be classified into reputation evidence, opinion evidence as well as concrete behavior evidence. At last, the section pointed out the features and the historical development of character evidence.The section two emphatically analyzed the procedural ideas of character evidence rules. Firstly, the section analyzed the issue of relevance of character evidence. The section pointed out that character might be the object of trial in some situation in which character evidence was not only relevant to the party's credibility, but also simultaneously relevant to the issue of whether the accused has committed present offence. But, character was only relevant to the party's credibility in the most situations. And, the legislative tendency furtherly denied the existence of the relevance between the character and the issue of whether the accused has committed present offense. Lastly, the section successively explained the theoretical foundations of defendant character evidence, witness character evidence and victim character evidence.The section three firstly introduced the legislation and cases of character evidence rules in the United States and the United Kingdom, and pointed out the developing tendency of character evidence in the common law system in the nowadays. And, the section also indicated the differences and the common grounds. Secondly, the section briefly introduced the legislation of character evidence rules in the civil law countries. At last, by taking the traditional legal thinking, the procedure pattern and the testimonial criteria as starting points, the section analyzed the causes of the differences between the civil law system and the Anglo-American law system in the respect of character evidence rules.The section four mainly discussed the necessary and possibility of establishing Chinese character evidence rules in the criminal justice, and posed a concrete designing idea about the rules. Firstly, the section pointed out that establishing of the rules would benefited the strengthening of the protecting system of defendant's rights, the improving of the cross inquiring system and the protecting system of victim's rights. Secondly, the section demonstrated that there was no systematic obstacle in Chinese criminal procedure. Finally, the section clearly drew out the basic approaches of establishing Chinese character evidence rules, and made out a draft according Chinese practice.