Research On The Rights Of Counsel To Effective Assistance Of Criminal Defendant

Obtaining effective assistance of counsels is a right of action that a criminal defendant is entitled legally in criminal proceedings, which is also very important for the accused to get a fair trial and achieve procedural and substantive justice. For this reason, if there is no assistance of counsels, criminal defendants can not achieve their right of defense effectively with the offenses in the significance of equivalence, so obtaining effective assistance of counsels is the best access for criminal defendants to exercise his right of defense and avoid their rights being infringed. Constitutions of Western countries ruled by law provide the accused the right to obtain effective assistance of counsels, which make it rise to a constitutional right. The sixth article in the United Nations’Basic Principles on the Role of counsels particularly stress that:"if there is a judicial need, anyone who lacks a counsel has the right to be assigned one with experience and ability according to the nature of the crime, if he cannot afford this service, he can enjoy it free ".Compared with the minimum standards of relevant convention in these countries ruled by law and United Nations on the right to attain assistant of counsels, china’s law is still quite imperfect, the Criminal Litigation Law neither pays any concern about whether criminal defendants obtain effective assistance from counsels, nor provides any effective relief measures on their right. This shows that there is a great gap in assuring the accused to attain effective assistance. In tackling this problem that criminal defendants obtain effective assistance of counsels, we should weigh it in two aspects, from the legislative and judicial viewpoints. On one hand, we should give full consideration to the realities of criminal defense of our country; on the other hand, we should learn the development regulation and rich experience that effective assistance of counsels from the developed countries, to reform combining with the practice. In the system vision, we not only rise the criminal defendants’attaining assistance of counsels to the height of the constitution what is more important, we should establish the relief mechanism of the right on the basis of a full complement of the Criminal Litigation Law.