| The witness is a key member of the criminal prosecution activities. Thetestimony of witness is the most widely used form of evidence. It is of greatsignificance to identify the facts of the case, to ensure the proceedings of the criminalprosecution procedure and to achieve justice. There are two forms of testimony, oneis made before the trail, and the other is made during the trail. The latter is the idealform of the testimony. As the irreplaceable position of the witnesses and theirtestimony in criminal prosecution activities, the state has set the duty for citizens totestify. But in practice, it has become a frustrating fact that the witnesses do not wantto, or are afraid to testify, especially to testify in court. According to the report ofXinhua News Agency, the average rate of witnesses to testify in court is less than10%, and in some area, the rate is only1%. This phenomenon cannot help makepeople worry that if the function of trail can really be played out, if the justice ofsocial can be guaranteed, and if our process of rule of law will be delayed.Based on the thinking on above issues, firstly I analyzed why the witnesses donot want to testify from two angles: from the psychological point of view, the worryof their security is the greatest obstacle; from the legislative and judicial point of view,there are lack of criminal witness protection system and witness mandatory appearingto court system.Based on the above conclusions, I believe that increasing the rate of witnesses totestify in court can proceed in two ways: improving witness protection system andwitness mandatory appearing to court system. However, force the witnesses who donot want to testify in court may lead to the situation that the witnesses do not dare totell the truth. So only to improve the witness protection system can solve the problemof witnesses unwilling to testify in court.In order to improve our witness protection system in China, I first studied othercountries’ witness protection system. Many countries have established relativelyperfect system of witness protection. In the study, I focused on the United StatesFederal Witness Protection Program and Germany’s witness protection system. In addition, I also analyzed the elements of witness protection system of Canada, Ireland,Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, and United Kingdom.I have got some inspirations on object of protection, protection authorities, andprotection measures.In the “Amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law”, there are newly addedprovisions on criminal witness protection, which relates to the object of protection,protection authorities, protection measures, and protection procedures. Theseprovisions set out the framework of the criminal witness protection system in China,but there are still many imperfections: the scope of the protection object needs to beextended; the responsibilities of the protection authorities need to be clearly divided;the protection measures need to be categorized; the protection procedure needs to beestablished.In China’s criminal witness protection system, there are many aspects to beperfected. I proposed the following advice against the existing problems in China’scriminal witness protection system:In the matter of object of protection, I suggest that except for the four types ofcrimes enumerated in “Amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law”, the relatedauthority should issue an interpretation to “other types of crimes” and extend thetypes of crimes. In addition, persons who are closely related with the witness shouldalso be protected together with witness and witness’s close relatives.In the matter of protection authorities, I suggest that a Witness ProtectionCommittee should be set up in the Public Security Authority, People’s Procuratorate,and People’s Court. The Witness Protection Committee should make witnessprotection plans according to application and carry out the protection measures. TheWitness Protection Committee of one authority should be responsible for the witnessthrough the whole criminal prosecution process.In the matter of protection measures, I suggest that the protection measuresshould be divided according to their nature: preventive measures, punitive measures,and reparative measures. For the measures of the same nature, they should be sortedby the level of intensity. Protection authorities should select protection measuresaccording to the level of dangerous the witnesses suffer. In the matter of protection procedure, I believe that a process should beestablished, and it should include six steps: application; application review and startthe protection procedure; risk assessment, establish witness protection program;signed the witness protection program memoranda; execute protection plans;protection plan terminate.The above suggestions are more of a theoretical discussion. We still need todiscuss the possibilities of realizing them in reality, and we still need to deepen thestudy. However, I hope that I can make some contribution to our country’s criminalwitness protection system through this effort. |
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