A Research On The Chinese Criminal Pre-trial Conference System

The establishment of pretrial conference system, as the highlights of the new modified "Criminal Procedural Law", is of great significance in.improving the efficiency of the litigation and maintaining centralized trial. This paper analyzes the concept, value basis and function of pretrial conference, introduces the pretrial procedure of extraterritorial legal systems, sorts out relevant provisions of our country’s pretrial conference, and points out the practical difficulties and path for improvement of our pretrial conference.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part defines the concept of pretrial conference and differentiates pretrial conference from pretrial review procedures and pretrial preparatory procedure. I define the concept of pretrial conference as pretrial proceeding that to protect the right of action of the parties and promote efficient centralized trial, after public prosecution review and before the trial, pretrial conference is held according to the judge authority or application of both sides, the judge, the prosecution and defense jointly participate in the discussion of problems concerning collation of disputable point in the case, evidence discovery and exclusionary, finally the judge makes the decision.The second part analyzes the value basis and function of the pretrial conference. Pretrial conference, a system coming from common legal system, was introduced into our country, highlights the legal value of procedural justice and fair trial, can effectively improve the efficiency of the litigation, achieving the balance between the prosecution and the defense. The function of pretrial conference depends on the fundamental purpose of its legal provisions, the functions including information integration, disputes resolution, centralized trial, procedure division can farthest resolve pretrial disputes, remove obstacles to trial, avoid delay in the proceeding, improve trial efficiency.The third part describes the pretrial procedures of extraterritorial legal systems. Due to the differences in evolution of the law, litigation ideas and trial mode, pretrial procedure of common law and civil law countries have their own characteristics. This section describes the pretrial procedure of Britain, America, Germany, France and Japan to provide a reference for the application and perfection of pretrial conference system.The fourth part sorts out our country’s relevant provisions of the pretrial conference and points out the practical difficulties in it. Current vague legal provisions and unclear position of pretrial conference leads to the alienation of litigation mode; the general procedural rules are unfavorable to standardize the implementation; the lack of referee mechanism leads to the waste of judicial resources; difficult to exclude prejudge, may lead to unfair trial.The fifth part put forward suggestions to the improvement of the pretrial conference system. To promote the effective implementation of the pretrial conference, it is necessary to make clear the starting subject, expand the scope of the pretrial conference, establish pretrial judge system, improve the relevant procedures of pretrial conference, and make clear legal effect of pretrial conference.