The Cognizance Of The Crime Of Helping To Destroy The Evidence

The crime of helping to destroy evidence is a new crime of1997criminal lawamendment. It is to help the parties to destroy evidence, if the circumstances are seriousbehavior. The establishment of this crime provides a powerful legal protection for timely andeffectively striking crime and maintaining public order. However, Because of the ambiguityof legislation and by the traditional criminal theory, in judicial practice, how to correctlyunderstand the crime of helping to destroy evidence, especially for the acts of helping thecriminal litigant destroy and forge evidence exactly constitute a crime of shielding or thecrime of helping to destroy evidence is a difficult and often cause controversial issue injudicial practice. In this paper, the writer use a case of the crime of helping to destroyevidence to discuss the controversial issues related to the process of cognizance of the crimeof falsifying evidence. The full text is divided into five parts:The first part is the name of case: the cited case states details of a case that the people,Luo Jing, Qin Jianguo, Jiang Hong helped to destroy the evidence.The second part introduces basic situation of the cited case.The third part is the focus of controversy. The focus of controversy in this case is thecase of qualitative problem. The defendant’s conduct is constituted crime of shielding or thecrime of helping to destroy evidence at all.The fourth part elaborated the main disagreements in the process of trial: the prosecutionof the case holds that, the action of helping the suspect making the criminal evidence tochange transformation belongs to "shield", and" shield" behavior is included for helpingcriminals escape legal punishment and help him destroy incriminating evidence, therefore it issuspected to constitute the crime of shielding; And the judicial trial institution insists that it issuspected to constitute the crime of helping to destroy the evidence. After the establishment ofthe crime of helping to destroy and forge evidence, the range of crime of shielding has beenreduced, it is not properly explained in the cover-up of the crime of shielding, the behavior of helping to destroy evidence obviously should be covered up by the crime of helping todestroy evidence. So the conduct of the defendant shall constitute the crime of helping todestroy evidence.The fifth part is the research conclusion. The part is the emphasis of this paper.In this part, the author firstly analyzes and states reasons of causing the different views inthe process of dealing the case: the disagreements caused by both legal regulations due tocareless legislative reasons, also the contradictions arising from the fuzziness of legal conceptand complexion of objective behavior. Then the author focus on relating and analyzing theunderstanding of the objective element and the subjective element of crime of helping todestroy and forge evidence, specifically include: the definition and recognition of” helping”,the definition of “parties scope”, the definition of “destroy evidence”，understanding andcognizance of criminal intent of the crime of helping to destroy evidence and the cognizanceand consideration of objective crime motive. After that, the author discusses the boundariesand difference between the crime of helping to destroy evidence and the crime of shieldingin detail. In this section，the author thinks that, since the new criminal law have set up thecrime of helping to destroy evidence, then the activities of helping offenders destroy orfalsify evidence originally contained in "shield" activities should be independently separatedfrom the "shield" behavior. In the judicial practice, as to the behavior of helping offenders todestroy or forge the evidence, it shall be deemed to be the crime of helping to destroy andforge evidence. Finally, the author summarizes and analyses the cited case. Expounding theproblem form the view of according with the constitutive elements of crime. And the authorultimately believes that the defendant’s conduct in the cited case should constitute the crime ofhelping to destroy evidence.