The Study Of Cross-examination And Authentication On The Expert Opinion In Criminal Trial

With the development of science and technology and the progress of the society, theprofessional division of labor is more and more obvious and it is difficult fornon-professionals to identify problem of expertise. Facing obscure complexprofessional issues in criminal cases, in order to accurately identify facts of the case, itis necessary to learn from with the expert opinion. In judicial practice, expert opinionindeed plays an important role in identifying the case faces and reducing miscarriagesof justice. However, expert opinion is not a scientific expert judgment and the trialmust trust it blindly. Only after cross-examination and certification, expert opinion islikely to become part of the basis of a case decision.For a long time, there are many problems in the application of the expert opinionprocess, such as, evaluation of cross-examination formalization, the judge in theprocess of Authentication relying too much on expert opinion, no expert auxiliarysystem and so on, due to the limited regulation of our country’s Identification Systemand unclear cross-examination and authentication legal provisions. In order toimprove the unfavorable situation, the new "criminal procedural law", which ispromulgated in2012, carried out highly reform to The Criminal Expert Opinion. Thereform includes the original "conclusion" modified to the "The Criminal ExpertOpinion", perfecting the relevant regulation of identifier testifying in court, creatingthe expert auxiliary system etc. Undoubtedly, these rules will improve theIdentification system of China and provide sufficient guarantee for the application ofthe criminal expert opinion. However, due to our country’s judicial tradition and thedevelopment degree of identification system, there are still some inherent drawbacksin the application, which are the important problems we should focus on in the future.The two law system is different from our country in that they have always been paymore attention to the research of the criminal expert opinion (expert testimony). Aftera long period of judicial practice, they have formed a well-developedcross-examination and authentication system. In civil law system, judge plays adominant role in cross-examination and adopts the “principle of discretion” in theauthentication due to lack of a clear regulation. On contrary, with relatively clear rulesin authentication, Common law system adopted “parties against socialism” incross-examination. Although there are big differences in the application of TheCriminal Expert Opinion, they gradually integrate and learn from each other, which provide much beneficial enlightenment for our country’s relative system.With the background of the reform in application of the expert opinion, this paperprovides a useful exploration from the cross-examination, authentication and supportsfacilities construction for our country by learning good practice from two law systemand analyzing the drawbacks and the insufficiency in the application of expertopinion.