Empirical Study On The System Of Criminal Expert Assistant

The amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law in 2012 made the regulations of expert assistant’s participation in criminal proceedings in the legal level for the first time, but rough legislation also resulted in the differences in theoretical circles and practical circles of confusion, with a great impact on the operation of the system. In spite of this, the judicial practices in the past two years showed there were several cases of expert assistant appearing in court in some places. These positive explorations provided valuable experience for the development and perfection of the system, but also exposed many problems in the actual operation of the system. Therefore, this paper mainly adopts empirical methods. The purpose of the study is to investigate and analyze the actual operation situation of the system, find out the problem, propose solutions corresponding.The full paper can be divided into three parts, which is about 43,000 words:The first part investigates and analyses the actual operation of the expert assistant’s system. This part includes the following contents: on the whole, the application rate of the expert assistant’s system is very low, suitable types of cases and expert conclusion have an obvious classification, and area difference is not obvious. On the issue of subject qualification, the lack of unified standard of judging whether the one has professional knowledge causes controversy. Expert assistants appearing in court generally have a senior professional title like professor or chief physician, while there are few with qualification of judicial appraiser. Considering the need of judicial adjudication, the scope of professional knowledge should not be limited to the scope of judicial appraiser, but practitioners mainly think that the scope of professional knowledge should be the same as the scope of judicial appraiser. The rights and obligations of expert assistant are not clearly defined, which results in lack of protection of expert assistant’s basic rights and reduction of the enthusiasm for appearing in court. On the issue of court procedure, the right to application and decisions are given to both parties and the court respectively, which is reasonable. Application in the practice has three remarkable characteristics: the defenders have higher enthusiasm, parties apply for different purposes, and the judges play a potential role. The judge decides whether to appear, the judge in practice will consider mainly two factors: reasons for objection and the importance of the appraisal conclusion. The ideal state of the trial is that two sides compete at the same stage, but the appearance of appraiser is not the premise of the appearing of expert assistant. Preparation work before the trial is very important to the trial. For this, the judges pay special attention to prior understanding of the professional problems and the communication before the trial. However, submitting written opinions is also very important. Neutrality is not an essential attribute of expert assistant, so these experts are not applicable to the challenge system. Expert assistants should be with the applicants in one side in the trial, but the lack of uniform regulations leads to confusion in practice. The cross examination trial should include mutual inquiry, and we should guarantee expert assistant’s right of confrontation with the appraiser. On the issue of opinion and effect, expert assistant’s opinion is professional, but does not have evidential qualification. We should consider it as part of Accused of opinions or defense opinions, including trial opinions and comments in writing in form. On the issue of validity, on the one hand, when it is difficult to judge the authenticity of the expert conclusion, prosecutors tend to adopt the expert conclusion, while judges tend to handle the problem according to the principle of burden of proof. On the other hand, the sentence will not respond directly to the expert assistant’s opinion, but the effect of these opinions should not be ignored.The second part of the paper gives an overall evaluation of the system in practice, which reflects and points out the problems. Overall, the number of related cases is not much, but the practice still has accumulated valuable experience. At the same time, the operation of the system also reweals many problems: the relevant provisions of the law are too simple, which can’t build a good framework for the operation of the system; some practitioners with psychological conflicts lack understanding of expert assistants; appearing in court tends to become a mere formality, and its effect is not very good; the supervision of related industries and services market is in the blank. The reason is in many aspects: the first is that legal regulation is not perfect; the second is the case pressure, what means that the use of expert will inevitably affect the efficiency of litigation; the third is that a considerable part of practitioners are not familiar with the new system; the fourth is that the effect of practice is difficult to get recognized; the fifth is that cases that need expert assistant are not much; the sixth is that the implementation of related system is not good.The third part puts forward suggestions to improve the expert assistant system. On the one hand, we should take measures to improve the system itself: we should clearly stipulate the rights and obligations, the litigation status and the legal attribute of opinion of the expert assistant. At the same time, we should clearly stipulate the use of rules written comments, regulating that if there are disagreements, comments in court shall prevail. We can consider expanding of the scope of expert assistant, and clearly stipulate court procedures. We also should emphasize on the allocation of the principle of burden of proof in the identification of the role of the objection review. On the other hand, we should take measures to perfect the relevant systems and measures, and narrow for the emerging industry regulatory gap, which will actively guide the healthy development of the market. Besides, we also should pay attention to comprehensive training of the ability of examination of expert conclusion’s form, which would result in the formation of professional problems of stereo review system. We should continue to promote the reform of the criminal justice system, perfect the related system, and have a correct understanding of current situation of low rate of application system. On the one hand, we should take measures including personal protection and material guarantee to solve the difficult problem of the witness and appraiser’s appearing in court, which meets the demand of trial centrism. On the other hand, we should keep a positive attitude towards and a correct understanding of the phenomenon of the low rate of appearance of expert assistant and the small number of related cases.