The Analysis Of The Procedural Issues Of Linking Administrative Law Enforcement Evidence With Criminal Evidence

Since long ago, China has been adopting the model distinguishing the illegal and criminal, and criminal law legislation, especially in the case of economic accusations,often uses numbers as the standard of sentences and thus the standard of distinguishing between administrative punishment and crime. Under this circumstance,it is common to see criminal cases involved in the administrative process, especially under certain conditions such as joint operations taken by the government and policemen. Typically, the administrative organ often transfers this kind of cases to the judicial organ. However, prior to 2012, this way of handling cases lacked legislative support, and department regulations and documents were sufficient enough to authorize the judicial organ to handle the cases, resulting in some serious problems.First, such regulations do not apply to all cases and subjects. From the perspective of applicable subjects, the regulations issued by the State Council only have the power to restrain the administrative organ, while the documents issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate only aim at cases involving crimes related to the jurisdiction of the procuratorial organ. Both, however, lack the binding power on the public security organ and the case-review standard during trials. Although the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate as well as the Ministry of Public Securitysubsequently issued a number of regulations, such as the advice on how to handle infringement of intellectual property, and confirmed the legality of administrative evidence in certain criminal cases, this method of enumeration still has some hysteresis quality and cannot adapt to the constantly evolving case details.Furthermore, this method did not solve the issue of legal validitywhichislow or fulfill the absence of basic law. In 2012, the article 52 of the modified criminal procedural law solves this issue: it points out that the physical evidence obtained by the government during administrative law enforcement can be used in criminal proceedings, which grants the legal status of procedures that link administrative law enforcement evidence with criminal evidence. This system helps improve the efficiency of criminal proceedings and avoid cases where the judicial organ takes evidence repetitively and abandons useful evidence after making decisions. In addition, this system also allows the investigative organ to quickly obtain origins of evidence, grasp details of the case, find the break-through point, and form a relatively rigorous evidence chain, thus enabling the organ of public prosecution to initiate law suits correctly and allowing the adjudication organ to confirm case facts and give sentences based on relevant laws.However, the clauses of the modified criminal procedural law did not refine the system or give regulations with regards to evidence categories, operational mechanism, and supporting procedures, which results in the linking system’s excessive freedom during operation as well as the situation of chaotic conditions,inconsistent standards, and insufficient supervision. It is obvious that such a situation differs greatly from the original intention of the law makers. Therefore, it is necessary and meaningful to discuss the procedural question of the linking system of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence.This paper consists of four chapters. Starting with the procedural issue of the linking system of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence,this paper will explain relevant theories and the currently legislative system, and deeply analyze the value as well as the issues of this linking system. This paper tends to offer readers a thorough understanding of the current linking system ofadministrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence through a reference to foreign legislative and judicial systems. Through offering a creative framework,this paper aims to compensate the current insufficiency in the research programs related to the current issues in legislative and judicial practice, in the hope of improving this flawed system.The first chapter talks about the theoretical basis of the procedural issue of the linking system of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence.This chapter starts by explaining the regulations presented in Clause 2, Article 52 of the “Criminal Procedure Law.” First, this part analyzes relevant concepts of administrative law enforcement evidence, including the analysis of the ability of the administrative law enforcement evidence to enter the criminal realm(which demonstrates that law enforcement evidence is capable of playing the role of criminal evidence). It also includes the conceptual discrimination between administrative law enforcement evidence and administrative litigation evidence. Second is the understanding of the concept of “the administrative organ” in the Act and the clarification of the legal meaning behind it. This chapter will also set the theoretical basis for the rest chapters through examining the consistency of administrative and criminal evidence, including examining the consistency in the fundamental nature and categorical provisions, as well as the inconsistency among evidence collecting,procedures proving, and other standards. Furthermore, this chapter discusses the value of but also the real-life confusions about the linking system of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence. This part first explores the value of linking these two categories of evidence. Therefore, building this system has its structural significance. Second, this part also goes into depth about the possible negative consequences of such a system. In order to investigate the influence of these two aspects of this program, this paper will go into details about the justifiability of building the system.The second chapter is the analysis of how China’s criminal litigation has been using administrative law enforcement evidence. This chapter analyzes the framework of such a linking system from the aspects of legislation and operation. In the aspect oflegislation, China’s current “Criminal Procedure Law” is too abstract and vague about the use of administrative evidence and does not require the specific applicable procedures. On the one hand, the inconsistency between judicial interpretation and administrative law enforcement provisions can cause the procuratorial organ and the court to overlook inspections outside of the required range. On the other hand, this inconsistency might cause situations where the public security organ takes evidence illegally or where procedural regulations are ineffective. As for the practical matter,due to the lack of unified guidance of legislation, there might exist conditions such as the following: procedures being overly simple, cases being processed too slowly, the public security organ using the name of “administrative investigation” to cover“criminal investigation,” or evidence reviewing process being insufficient. It is thus helpful to examine the status quo and analyze the reasons and impact to demonstrate the necessity of structural completeness. This will also help guide a thorough discussion about procedural framework in the rest of the paper.The third chapter is the reference to foreign linking systems of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence. With the background knowledge of the difference in domestic and foreign legal systems, this paper will differentiate between civil law and common law systems and discuss the similarities and differences of the linking procedures in these two systems. These two law systems both recognize the qualification of administrative evidence to be used in criminal litigation procedures, as long as the administrative organ legally obtains evidence during administrative actions after examination. The difference is, countries who use the civil law system examine administrative evidence that is about to enter criminal litigation based on the standard of whether it guarantees the basic rights of the prosecuted, while countries employing the common law system use evidence-based operational method. China’s judicial practice can learn from foreign legislation and incorporate the idea of guaranteeing rights into judicial work, while improving the requirements of reviewing evidence that can enter the criminal litigation procedures.Chapter four is the procedural framework for linking administrative law enforcement evidence with criminal evidence. Combined with the previousdiscussions about theoretical background and practical experience, this chapter will focus on how to build an operating mechanism, a linking process, and a supporting mechanism on the basis of the clarification of basic principles. An operating mechanism is involved with the inspection standard/work of different kinds of evidence, mainly including physical evidence, verbal evidence, and sampling evidence obtained from administrative evidence. The second part focuses on the measures taken to correct flawed administrative law enforcement evidence. The third part is about reinforcing the supervision mechanism, including internal supervision and procuratorial supervision. The linking system of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence is more inclined to guarantee the coherence of the procedural connection. This linking system clarifies the identity of the subject during the case-transfer process, refines the requirements of the administrative organ’s transfer materials, and reinforces the transfer materials’ inspection standard and procedure. The supporting mechanism of administrative law enforcement evidence and criminal evidence, on the other hand, is used to guarantee the implementation of this procedure, which is mainly related to the construction of the connection mechanism between the administrative law enforcement organ and the judicial organ,the enhancement of the administrative law enforcement organ’s evidence-collecting level, and the perfection of the rules of how administrative law enforcement staff testify in the court.