On Eyewitness System

In criminal lawsuit, criminal eyewitness system is established as a third party supervision mechanism for inquest, inspection, search and seizure on account of distrust of investigation. Chinese eyewitness system is established for supervising investigation organization, reflecting procedural justice and protecting human rights. In legal research, eyewitness system has not been focused as a technical question. In the legislative level, the revised eyewitness system is not consummate. In the justice practice, there exist many questions such as lack of witnesses, unqualified subject of witness, substandard witness procedure and controversial witness effectiveness. After implementation of the 2012《Criminal Procedure Law》, law court apply eyewitness system quiet strictly leading to many acquittals and withdraw charges, which attach great attention to prosecutors and public security organs. Therefore, it is necessary to research eyewitness system’s theory, content and practical operation status to improve this mechanism.Except the introduction, the text is divided into three parts about 18,000 words in total.The first part discusses the eyewitness system’s concepts, values and content. Criminal eyewitness refers to the litigation activities of citizens who have no interest with cases. They are invited to the scene by investigators, and supervise or prove investigator’s inquest, inspection, search and seizure through their own observations. Criminal eyewitness system has the value of supervising investigation powers, embodying procedural justice and promoting substantive justice. The main contents of criminal eyewitness system include witness subject, scope, procedure and effectiveness. Eyewitness subject, in other words, the witnesses is the core of this system. The current legislation and judicial interpretation require the witnesses “have no relation with the case”, and three kinds of people are excluded. Eyewitness scope mainly related to investigator’s inquest, inspection, search and seizure. The procedure of eyewitness refers to the rules of witnesses activities, which is not mentioned in current legislation. The effectiveness of eyewitness is the most important part, the establishment of illegal evidence exclusionary rule has provided a solution basis for the validity of violation witness procedure to obtain evidence.The second part conducts an empirical study of the operating conditions of the S region of criminal eyewitness system. A conclusion can be drawn from comparative study from the witness subject, scope, procedure and effectiveness: during the implementation of the 2012《Criminal Procedure Law》, the operation of criminal eyewitness system shows a good trend in which the investigation organ began to pay attention to this system such as the absence of witness decreased, the case issued instructions about witness increased. While, there are still quiet many questions including the employed staff of investigation organs or investigators as a witness; the witness absents from some individual cases; the investigation organs don’t pay attention to the witness procedure;the process of witness is not complete and controversial effectiveness of evidence obtained in violation of procedures. There are three causes of these problems: the first is the natural defects in rights restricting powers, relying solely on witnesses is obviously not enough to supervise the investigation power. The second is the undue influence of traditional law enforcement ideas, the investigation organ has valued the entity, ignore the procedure from long long ago. The third is the direct result of system’s defects, the faultiness of current legislation and judicial interpretation result in ineffective operation of eyewitness system.The third part puts forward the suggestions of criminal eyewitness system’s improvement. In view of the existing problems in eyewitness system, it can be improved from the witness subject, scope, procedure and effectiveness. It should be cleared that the witness has the litigation status of participants in the proceedings, the rights and obligations of witness should also be cleared to make them fulfill the task better, the investigation organs should strengthen witness’ s subject qualification by making explanations and records etc. The investigation organs shall strictly implement the related regulations in current laws and the procuratorate shall strengthen the legal supervision and the court shall enhance the examination. A reasonable witness procedure should be established in which detailed provisions investigators invited witnesses to the scene, to verify the identity of witnesses, to fulfill the obligation of informing, to testify and autograph or seal.The judicial organs should have unified opinions about two questions: one for the judicial organs or public security’s employed staff which are not exercising criminal procedural power, they can be served as a witness. The other one is the effectiveness of evidence in violation of procedures to obtain, it should be strictly distinguished and recognized by the illegal evidence exclusionary rule.