On The Construction Of Criminal Preliminary Hearing System In China

The Chinese Criminal Procedure Law, Section 3 provides that the police offices are responsible for the Preliminary Hearing. For this reason, some scholars believe that the Preliminary Hearing exists in our law system. In fact, the Preliminary Hearing in our Criminal Procedure Law which is one kind of investigation, is completely different with the real sense of this concept. Actually, Preliminary Hearing does not exist in our country. The absence of this system, making the starts of criminal proceedings controlled by the procuratorate entirely, the power is unlimited, and the human right of the defendant is not protected, effective between making the decision to prosecute and opening of the trial. Therefore, it is necessary to build a Preliminary Hearing System which is suitable for China and have international standards.Preliminary Hearing is an independent procedural stage in a criminal prosecution, in this stage, the judge reviews the legitimacy of this prosecution based only on facts and evidence which provided by the public procurator, and then make a procedural ruling about the criminal prosecution. Preliminary Hearing is a stage between criminal prosecution and trial. The judge, which has the power of hearing at the neutral position, reviews the legitimacy of this prosecution, if the prosecution meets the statutory requirements, the trial process will start, and vice versa, the trial process can not be start. Preliminary Hearing System is constituted by principles and procedural regulations which meet the needs of Preliminary Hearing. It is a prevalent and important litigation system in today's international criminal justice. Because the need of the smooth conduct of criminal proceedings, the need of protect the justice of criminal ruling, the need to improve the efficiency of criminal proceedings, and the need to protect human rights, this system should be established.As the Preliminary Hearing system has been effectively implemented in many countries, so it is inevitable to learn the advanced systems and experiences of other countries when we build our Preliminary Hearing system. Through researching the systems of the UK, US, Germany, we find there are many inspirations which are important to China about the attention to human rights protection, to procedural justice, to trial-centrism. It is the right time to build our own Preliminary Hearing, the opportunities of ideology, politics, theory, practical basis are OK. We must follow the basic principles such as fair and efficient, equal participation and prevent pre-cut and moderately against, not only learn the successful experiences outside, but also build the system based on our national conditions. In order to build a Preliminary Hearing system with Chinese characteristics, the system should be used for felony cases, controlled by professional criminal judges.