A Study On Pretrial Conference System In Criminal Procedure

Pretrial conference system has been added in the new Amendment of CriminalProcedural Law of our country recently, which is one of the highlights in thisamendment, and is of much significance to improve the efficiency of the litigationand the quality of the trials.“Pretrial conference” in criminal procedure is a meetingheld by the court before the commencement of trial among the two opposing partiesand the judge, at which the two parties narrow the issues, discuss discovery andsuppression, and take other steps to promote a fair and expeditious trial.The definition of the pretrial conference can be understood from three aspects.First, pretrial conference is a kind of pretrial preparatory procedure, which concen-trates on the preparation for the commencement of the trial. Secondly, pretrial con-ference is a meeting attended by the prosecution, the defense and the judge, whichperforms with the basic litigation construction. Finally, pretrial conference is a plat-form which can carry some specific procedures or systems. Overall, the fundamentalfunction of the pretrial conference is to remove the obstacles in advance that maydelay the litigation process in order to speed up the trial. Aiming at pretrial prepara-tion, pretrial conference has three specific functions: information centralization,dispute resolution and procedure division.Efficiency is the core value of the pretrial conference system. Justice must beachieved not only in a visible manner but also in an efficient way. The Code ofCriminal Procedure is a device allocating litigation resources from an economicstandpoint. The scarcity of litigation resources determines that efficiency has to beconsidered as an important factor when designing and operating the modern criminalprocedure system. By reducing the costs and optimizing the allocation of the re-sources, pretrial conference can pre-settle the procedural and substantive issues. Atthe same time, basic justice cannot be neglected. So pretrial conference should atleast meet the following demands: the participation of both parties, the equality be-tween the prosecution and the defense, and the judger’s neutrality. There is a particular scope of cases in which holding a pretrial conference isnecessary. The standard limiting the scope can be summarized as two aspects: first,there is a procedural request or dispute which may result in a delay of the trial pro-cess; secondly, the cases are extraordinarily important and complicated in which thecourt need to sort out the evidence and the fact points. The institutional roles thepretrial conference can play are mostly determined by the contents of the pretrialconference which should consider the following aspects: the first is the efficiency ofthe proceedings; the second is that pretrial conference cannot overtake the taskswhich must be dealt with in the following trial in order not to make the trial a merefigurehead. The contents of the pretrial conference include two aspects: the central-ized settlement of the procedural requests or disputes, and collating part of the sub-stantive issues.The procedural constitution of pretrial conference consists of starting mode,presiders, participants, and validity etc. The court can hold a pretrial conference onits own or on a party’s motion. Pretrial conference’s presider can be a judge or otherpersonnel rather than the one in charge of the later trial. It is the prosecution and thedefense who should participate in the pretrial conference simultaneously, but the de-fendants do not have to take part. The pretrial conference’s validity contains threedimensions, which are elaborated as time limitation, the restraint of the conclusionand the relief system.The exclusion of the illegally obtained evidence is one of the key elements ofthe pretrial conference, so this issue has been specially discussed in this paper. Run-ning evidence suppression investigation in the pretrial procedure should be a bettersolution than that functions in an incomplete “trial in trial” mode in China today. Soour country can create a “pretrial conference mode” for suppression, which is rea-sonable and feasible, and in principle the suppression issue can be resolved in a par-ticular type of pretrial conference called “suppression hearing”. Pretrial conferencesystem provides the opportunity for the mentioned idea.“Suppression hearing”should be built mainly from the following aspects. First, the conference can be heldon the court’s own or on a party’s motion. Secondly, the prosecution bear the burdento prove the legitimacy of the disputable evidence and the investigation proceeding should be conducted under the allocation of burden of proof between the prosecutionand the defense. Finally, the right to appeal after trial should be given to the partieswhich is similar to that granted for the substantive judgement, but interlocutory ap-peals should be the most ideal means of remedy.