A Comparative Research On The Causes Of The Wrongful Convictions In China And The Unites States

This paper includes four parts except for introduction and conclusion.Part one: the causes of wrongful convictions in China, including insider and outsider factors.Through the analysis of 25 typical wrongful conviction cases, the author summarizes the causes in six aspects: the improper behavior of the judicial authority, false confessions, false identification or wrong use of the expert opinion, false testimony of the witness, false statement of the victim and false identification. But these factors within the case can not explain the real reasons which have led to unjust cases. Through observation, the author found that the negative factors in Chinese traditional legal culture, unreasonable criminal policy, excessive outside pressure, unreasonable criminal litigation and evaluation mechanism affect the impartiality of the jurisdiction, may even become the decisive factor to the criminal unjust case.Part two: the causes of wrongful convictions in the United States. Through the study of the statistics and reporting issued by the National Registry of Exonerations, the author divides the cause within the case into six aspects: perjury or false accusations, official misconduct, mistaken eyewitness identification, false or misleading forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, false confessions. Opinion, popular will, race and other factors which is outside the judicial system are very important reasons for repeated occurrence of unjust cases. Wrong judicial concept impacts the fairness and justice of judicial judgment, leading to errors constantly copied; Combating violent crime of the public demands affect the judicial personnel's behavior, affect the formation of judicial judgment; cancer of racial discrimination deep into the judicial staff's blood, influence the justice of criminal justice system.Part three: a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences about the cause of wrongful convictions in China and the United States. There are many similarities in the structural distribution and origin cause about the wrongful convictions of China and America. From the type of unjust case, the unjust cases are concentrated in murder and rape. In genesis, judiciary misconduct, false scientific evidence, false verbal evidence, is a common cause of Sino-US criminal unjust case. But, in different judicial field, the cause of the unjust case also exists differences. The causes of unjust case in the United States, inadequate legal defense is an important factor, while in our country, the lawyers were dutifully defense, but defense opinion is ignored by the judicial staff; plea bargaining system, jury system, racial discrimination, unreliable informants or informer has a unique effect to the unjust case of America; The negative factors of the traditional legal culture and the unreasonable criminal litigation mechanism and evaluation mechanism is the peculiar factor to the formation of the unjust verdict of our country.Part four: Enlightenment from the comparative study of the causes of unjust case in China and America. By comparing the cause of Sino-US unjust case, the author has a system understanding of it. At the same time, also have a more objective, more sober understanding of the two countries criminal litigation systematic and judicial practice. Also, there is a lot of inspiration to our country's judicial practice and judicial reform. Firstly, the plea bargaining system, resulting in a large number of unjust cases in judicial practice, and in our country there is no space and necessity for this system; secondly, there are advantages and disadvantages about the United States' adversarial trial and China's questioning trial, and questioning trial is our country's rational choice, we should give confidence and support to the current judicial reform of our country; Thirdly, the development of our country's defense system is very.But many of America's approach is worth for reference. We should improve our country's defense system from the defendant's self-justification and the lawyer's defense: improving our country's defense system, protecting the suspect and the defendant's right to defense; Fourthly, although there is progress about our country's ongoing jury reform system, there are still some problems, and the American jury system will have great significance to our country's jury system reform. Under the premise of a accurate positioning of the current people's jury system and a clear cognition for the future reform direction, we can improve the people's jury system and safeguard the judicial jurisdiction of the citizens from these aspects: the qualification and procedure of the selection of the people's jurors', protect the right of people's jurors' participating in trial of fact.