Criminal System Of Witness Protection

Witness's testimony, as one of the most popular evidences in the criminal procedure around the world, lies in the core center of the Chinese criminal procedural system. Since serving as a witness at the trial is crucial to actualizing and reinforcing its role in the criminal proceedings. a system is widely established for witness's participation at court., In a worldwide development of criminal proceedings, serving as a witness at the trial is an inevitable trend. It is stipulated in the <International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights> When accused of criminal charge, everyone has the due right to inquire the witness who goes against him or her including those have already been inquired, and he or she is free to have the witness in favor of him or her to take part in the inquiry, under the same condition as the witness who goes against. The mentioned above is called as "the lowest limit for the right protection" to be enjoyed by the suspect. In contrast, what happened in China is not as good as our expectation; most of the witnesses choose not to Serve as a witness at the trial For instance, the percent of witnesses who attending the court's investigation is Remotely approaching 1 percentage. One of the eminent scholars concluded this as:witness gives testimony to the police and procurator rather than to the court, which brings a lot of negative influences:it makes impossible to find out the truth as well as to realize the judicial justice. Although there are lots of reasons for the witness to avoid attending the court investigation, in my opinion, the absence of the witness protection system is one of the primary reasons. We have failed to build any systems relevant to the witness protection since the foundation of the criminal procedure of the new China, let alone the update and perfection of it, which results in the shortage of enough personal and property right protection provided to the witness, that is the reason why the witness don't or dare not to attending the court's investigation and giving testimony oneself.Based on this, the author tries to do some researches on the current situation of the Chinese witness in Chinese criminal procedure, as well as to build a system of Chinese characteristics to protect the witness and perfect and enrich the Chinese criminal procedural system, which should fit in the Chinese situation, at the same time abide by the principles of fairness, impartiality and openness, to fully play of the social and legal meaning of the Chinese criminal procedural system.