Research On The Appropriate Adult Presence System

The juvenile justice system represents the nation’s law progress and judicial civilization, and always be treated as a legal target of maximizing maintenance of minors’ legitimate rights and interests. Being the vulnerable groups of the society, minors have their own characteristics which are quite different from the adults:minors’mental development are not mature enough, which causes issues like lacking the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and are also easily affected by the surrounding environment. Based on the context above, construction and law should pay extra attention on the minors, so setting the criminal justice system of minor will perfectly fit this goal, which shows the special love of the law and maximizes the maintenance of the minors’legitimate rights and interests. And the appropriate adult presence system is an important juvenile protection system with the above principle of rule of law. The system is refer to a special criminal procedure system so as to maintain the juvenile litigation rights,which means, the system should make sure the adult have rights of participating the suit progress like questioning, and the inquiry or trial of minors in criminal proceedings, without the presence of the parents, all behaviors on minors are illegal. The system is originated in the UK, and are also established in the major countries of Anglo American law system and continental law system, and be incorporated into the provisions of the relevant international conventions. In our country, although there have been many similar provisions in the relevant laws, but many confusion are still existed, and this situation is ended in 2012 by the new revised criminal procedure law. And the appropriate adult presence system is established in the law clearly for the first time. In practice, based on a long exploration, the judicial organs gradually formed three kinds of modes of appropriate adult presence system, specifically including the Panlong mode, Pudong mode and Tongan model, and these modes brought some legal effect. But, overall, the influence by the long time absence and uniform still cause some shortness, whether it is in the stipulation of law, or in the judicial practice of our country, there are many problems in the appropriate adult presence system, which restricts the further play to the function of system, which is against the conducive to the legislative spirit of real implementation of supervision organs and maximize the legitimate rights and interests of the case maintenance of minors. Based on the basic theory of appropriate adult presence system and comparison of relevant legal practice of main countries of two legal systems, this article emphatically analyzes the present legislative and judicial status of our country’s appropriate adult system, and puts forward the in-depth and concrete legal suggestions to build and enrich our country’s relevant system.Beside the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into four parts.The first part is to explain the basic theory of the appropriate adult presence system. The appropriate adult presence system means the adult should be present in order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of minors when judicial organs in handling cases of minors in the various stages of the whole criminal procedure. Otherwise, that is illegal. The appropriate adult presence system has four legal value, such as the value of the protection of rights, the value of procedure justice, the value of law education and the value of litigation efficiency, and the these legal value are also the theoretical basis of the existence of the appropriate adult presence system.The second part is based on the investigation of the appropriate adult presence system of extraterritorial legislation practice. It introduces the relevant legislation practice of main countries in Anglo American law system and continental law system from the aspects of the applicable objects, such as the appropriate scope of adults, appropriate adult rights and obligations, the participation of the program and the legal effect. Compared with the continent law system, provisions on the appropriate adult presence system in common law countries uphold legitimate procedure pattern, pay more attention to the protection of minors’ rights and interests, and the design of the relevant legal system are more complete. In the adult appropriate qualification requirements, the legislation of Anglo American law system countries are more stringent requirements, and focus on the speciality of the appropriate adults. In the area of the law’s effect, the Anglo American law system countries pay more attention to emphasis on illegal evidence exclusion rules, that is, if there is no present of appropriate adult during the interrogation of the minors, the confession of minors will be regarded as illegal. Therefore, the experiences of the legislation in the countries of Anglo American law system should be used as references of building our own appropriate adult presence system.The third part aims to introduce and analysis the legal status of our present system of appropriate adult. First of all, there are many shortages in legislative situation of our country’s appropriate adult present system, such like, the legal status of appropriate adult provisions is not clear, the existence of conflict of laws is still existed, the selection criteria is usually be ignored and still reminded in a narrow area. Secondly, this part also analysis our nation’s appropriate adult presence in legal practice. Despite these successful modes like Panlong, Pudong and Antong, there are still many problems:the independent legal status is not strong, applicable stages is in a rather narrow scope, regulations of appropriate adult are unreasonable, appropriate adult relief rights are still blank in some point after the lack of clear defined, validity of law are unknown.The fourth part focus on the legal suggestions to improve appropriate adult presence system of our country. There should be many suggestions to perfect our country’s appropriate adult presence system as the following aspects:ensure the independent legal status of appropriate adults, expand the applicable object of the appropriate adult system, perfect the selection of appropriate adult, give the right choice of appropriate adult to minors, clear the participation lawsuit, clear the stage specific procedures, clear the provisions of the appropriate adult participation refinement, enlarge and clear the appropriate adults scope of rights and obligations, strengthen the legal effect of the appropriate adult participation, and specify the synchronous recording system.