Functions’ Viewing About The Criminal Pretrial Conference Program Of China

According to The newly revised "Criminal Procedural Law" in 2012, article 182 paragraph 2 : "Before the trial, the judges may convene the public prosecutor, the parties involved, the defenders and agents of penal proceedings to get to know the situation related to trial and listen to suggestions, such as the withdrawal in court, the list of the witness appearing in court, illegal evidence exclusion and so on". These provision stipulates the procedure of criminal pretrial conference,the interpretation of Supreme People’s Court Article 184, 183 and the regulation of Supreme People’s Procuratorate Article 431-443 have further completed detailed provision of the specific application of the criminal pretrial conference procedure. However, it’s the first time to setting the criminal pretrial conference procedure in our legal system which still operated in a testing phase. This procedure conceals flaws in terms of system orientation, procedural binding and the scope of handling matters, it also lacks of detailed specification to provide a clear direction for the application of the judicial organs, which caused the confused situation of the "support" and the "opposite" in the criminal pretrial conference procedure. Even though the newly revised "Criminal Procedural Law" has been implemented for more than two years, the application rate of the criminal pretrial conference procedure was still unsatisfactory in the judicial practice; even in the few part of the case which apply to the procedure, the problems discussed in the criminal pretrial conference will be raised and solved time and again due to the loophole in this procedure, and the system function of the criminal pretrial conference procedure also can’t be efficiently reflected.The uncertainty of theory often fails to guide the judicial practice effectively, therefore, we have to conduct in-depth analysis to the system function of the criminal pretrial conference procedure from the perspective of the theory, so that we can amend the application of this procedure and achieve its legislation purpose. The criminal pretrial conference procedure in our legal system should be provided with three main functions which contains solving the procedural issues, evidence sorting and information exchange. The first function focuses mainly on solving the procedural problem and removing the procedural obstacles for court trial, it’s the basic, primary function of the criminal pretrial conference procedure. The function of evidence sorting mainly used to distinguish and sort information between contentious evidence and unanimously evidence. It help to clear the case issues and make the trial more targeted. The function of information exchange is capable of implementing the fully exchange of case information among the accusing party, the defender and the Judges, what’s more, equipping themselves to deal with the trial more efficiently. This article aims to find out some defects of the criminal pretrial conference procedure under the guidance of these three system function, and provide some feasible suggestion to improve the legal regulations of the criminal pretrial conference procedure.