On The Construction Of The Protection System Of Witnesses With A Sensitive Status

The term of "witnesses with a sensitive status" means, under the premise capacity of witnesses, a group of witnesses who could play a key role in some specific cases because of their special status. On the basis of the characteristics of special status, invisibility of evidentiary process, applicability only in some specific cases, indispensability in terms of a chain of evidence, high risk, etc, witnesses with a sensitive status should be distinguished from others who have no special status.In terms of the protection system of witnesses with a sensitive status, it has characteristics such as specialty, stringency and necessity.At present, the term of "witness with a sensitive status" has not been put forward precisely by any country. However, almost all west countries, such as German, the US, Japan, France, have built a perfect system in terms of witnesses with a special status. In contrast, in China, although there are provisions relating to protection of witnesses in Criminal Procedural Law revised in2012, these provisions lack the corresponding theoretic guide; moreover, the rules are too simple to comprehensively regulate the related subjects, objects, contents, forms and guarantee manners, which are not beneficial to the practice. As a result, there are still a great number of problems in terms of protection of witnesses with a sensitive status. In China, it is really necessary and feasible to establish the protection system of witnesses with a sensitive status. As to the necessity, the establishment of this system is an inevitable requirement of ensuring the justice of litigation, a necessary choice to expand the spirit of rule of law and enhance people’s legal awareness. As for the feasibility, witnesses with a sensitive status usually have a strong desire to appear in court, so the improvement of protection procedure can stimulate them to do it to fight crimes; the provisions relating to the protection measures of ordinary witnesses given by the revised Criminal Procedural Law in2012have laid the foundation for the establishment of procedures protecting witnesses with a sensitive status; west countries’experience in the division of witnesses according to their status and the strengthening protection of witnesses with a sensitive status have supplied important theories and practical experience.On the basis of that, from my perspective, the establishment of the protection system of witness with a sensitive status, should combine the principles and structures of criminal procedural laws, draw on the advanced experience in legislation and judicial practice in foreign countries and consider the current situation of China, etc. Finally, we should build a comprehensive protection system of witnesses with a sensitive status, involving pretrial procedures (including the definition, examination, and protection of witness with a sensitive status, etc), trial procedures (including appearing in court, degree of proof, a punishment mechanism for perjury, etc) and procedures after trial (change of job and residence, security, compensation, etc).