On The Construction Of Transactional Immunity In Our Country

As the continuous development of the society and the technology, the rate of all manner of highly-concealed and well-organized crime keeps rising. In fact, due to lack of key evidence, criminals are often free from legal sanctions. It is noteworthy of that although all of them are involved in crimes, damages caused by their criminal behavior and roles in their criminal process are not the same. The transactional immunity targets against criminals who are prosecuted for minor offenses and are supporting roles in joint offences. Their key testimony obtained by the transactional immunity achieves punishing major criminals purpose. The system is quite mature in foreign countries. There is such provision in common law countries, i.e. the U.S.A. and the U.K., and civil law countries, i.e. Germany. However, this system which widely worldwide exists is hard to find in China’s law. The reason is that there is no legal ground---the privilege against self-incrimination in Criminal Procedure Law. Therefore, even similar treatments exist in practice, it still lacks of theoretical supports. As "the privilege against self-incrimination" is explicitly written into the draft Code of Criminal Procedure in China, this system finally has legal ground. Moreover, it makes the theory and judicial practice based on a legal ground, which can be analyzed deeply and design system correspond with the China’s actual needs. This paper will discuss the transactional immunity in four parts. In the first part, based on the concept of the transactional immunity, it will generally analyze the emergence, the development and sorts of values in this system. In the second part, there is some observation about this system in foreign countries. It will introduce relevant provisions about this system and comparative analysis also follow. In the third part, it will discuss the exertion of the system in China. It will explore similarities and differences of similar laws and the immunity of witness and analyze its exertion in juridical practice. In the fourth part, it is the main part that discusses the specific design of this system in China. Primarily, it will elaborate the possibility of implementing the immunity in China. Secondly, it will conduct a preliminary idea on the sphere of application, applicable objects, applicable conditions, operation programs and related measures. The purpose is to provide some suggestions to construct the transactional immunity in our country.