On The Reform Of Sentencing Procedure

Research on the sentencing procedure is an important component of study on criminal procedure by the modern legal country since presently human beings are more eager to pursue fairness, while such pursuit is firstly reflected by pursuit of legal justice, particularly the criminal laws which is closely related to human beings' interest and thus people are more eager to realize justice in it. Now people are no longer simply focus on the justice of substantive criminal laws, instead they are paying increasing attention to the fairness of criminal procedures. Criminal practical and theoretical departments in the world are actively exploring the optimization of sentencing procedure. Being influenced by foreign countries, the practical and theoretical departments in our country are also positively studying the reform of sentencing procedure, this is because on one hand sentencing procedure has its own and unique value, and on the other hand, the defects of sentencing procedure in our country are gradually revealed in practices.Whether the sentencing procedure is fair or not is not only related to the security of the defendants and victims' legal rights, but also relevant to real actualization of judicial justice. Sentencing procedure is a concept relative to conviction procedure. Conviction solves the qualitative problem of right or wrong, while sentencing deals with the quantitative problem of seriousness. The value of sentencing procedure can not be replaced by conviction procedure. However, over a long time, in the judicial practices of our country, there has been a concept of "focusing on substantiality and overlooking procedures" and "focusing on conviction and overlooking sentencing", which result in low correlation between procuratorial organs, interested parties and sentencing procedures, insufficient publicity and transparence of sentencing procedure, lack of public supervision on law officers'discretionary power to some extent, people paying no attention to the particularity, complexity and importance of sentencing procedures over a long time, no independent sentencing procedure set in legislation but just mixing it with the conviction procedures which causes no embodiment of its value, insufficient attention being paid to the sentencing evidence and the defendants'defense on their own sentence in judicial practices which hence causes no good guarantee to the interested parties'legal right. All these factors drive the reform of sentencing procedure in our country.It is worthy of delight that after entering the 21st century, sentencing procedure gradually received attention from both practical and theoretical department. The Supreme People's Court even incorporates it as an important part of criminal juridical system reform, and proposes to improve and consummate the relatively independent sentencing procedures in the Second Five-Year Reform Plan of the People's Court. Since then sentencing procedure began to enter people's vision officially. Later Guiding Opinion on the Sentencing Procedure of People's Court (trial) was promulgated, and implemented in some courts of China from June 2009, which have formally unveil the reform of systematical reform of sequencing procedure in our country. This paper conducts the research in such background. Firstly, this paper introduces the basic connotation and features of sentencing procedure. After having a basic understanding of the sentencing procedure, foreign researches on the theory of sentencing procedure are introduced, which allow us to know the reality and accomplishment achieved foreign researches, so that we have an overall and clear understanding of sentencing procedure. Later this paper points out the problems existing in our country's sentencing procedure, as well as some theories and propositions of the practical and theoretical department in our country. Finally after sufficient analysis, in combination with the national situation in our country, a sentence procedure which is suitable for our national situation is proposed, with which it is expected to guarantee the procuratorial organs and interested parties' involvement degree in the sentencing procedure, enhance the transparence and publicity of sentencing procedure in our country, construct consummated and sound sentencing structure, choose proper and reasonable sentencing methods, and further optimize the sentencing procedures in our country. Meanwhile, this paper also proposes that we should have a reasonable expectation on the sentencing procedure, and treat its value correctly, and it is not feasible to simple regard it as the only solution to unfair sentencing.