Witness Protection In The Law Procedure

On June13,2010, the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice jointly issued two provisions---the provisions about《review and judgment on evidence in handling death penalty cases》and the provisions about《exclusion of illegal evidence in Handling Criminal Cases》----these two provisions are to further improve China’s criminal procedure system, deepen the reform of the judicial system and working mechanism. The two provisions not only fully stipulate the basic principles of criminal evidence, refine the standard of proof, but also further specify the types of evidence collection, fixation, review, judgment and utilization. In addition, twenty-second session of the Eleventh NPC Standing Committee witnessed the examination and deliberation of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft) in August2011and witness protection was in the draft, which shows that our country attach more importance to witness protection system. During the internship in people’s higher Court,the author found that the witnesses were reluctant to testify in court because of fear of retaliation, as well as a certain cost and other reasons, resulting in extremely low rate of attendance of witnesses in China. Based on this, I try to analyze deep-seated reasons behind this phenomenon by introducing domestic and foreign legislation and practice.As multiple perspectives are needed in analyzing a problem, this essay is divided into five parts to discuss this issue respectively.The first part is about the theoretical definition of the scope of the witness protection system.In the second part, the author describes the function of the procedural law of the witness protection system, including the function of entity justice, the function of litigation balance, the function of protection of human rights and the efficiency function..The third part is about the witness protection system and practice in the most representative countries, namely United States, Britain, Germany. The fourth part, the author shows the current situation and the problems of witness protection system, and analyzes and summarizes the defects and shortcomings in the witness protection system and practice through the four cases of reality.In the fifth part, based on the analysis and summary of witness protection system, the author put forward some shallow recommendations on construction of the system in China.