| According to Amendment(IX) to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2015, Article 311 of the Criminal Law-“crime of refusing to offer evidence relative to espionage crime” has added new evidence types. This amendment expanded the crime circle of concealing evidence, but the expansion of crime circle does not mean the improvement of accusation system. At least, we couldn’t find a corresponding position for the behavior of "concealing evidence" in current Criminal Law. In current judicial practice, concealing evidence behavior has caused serious infringement of legal interest, but it can hardly be given criminal punishment based on principle of legality. To design the legislation and incriminate concealing evidence behavior, systematic and strict argument is needed to avoid overly expansion of crime circle. Thus, it is necessary to conduct deep researches on concealing evidence behavior and explore the incrimination of concealing evidence behavior. This paper will comb current accusation system of evidence crime, classify types of concealing evidence and clarify incrimination scope of concealing evidence through research methods like legal hermeneutics and comparative study. Besides introduction, this paper mainly divides into the following four parts.Chapter one defines concealing evidence behavior. First of all, this chapter explains the concept of evidence through hermeneutic methods including literal interpretation, purposing interpretation and comparative interpretation. Chapter one limits the evidence of incriminating concealing evidence behavior into criminal proceedings via comparisons of evidence range and features in Civil Procedure Law, Administrative Procedure Law and Criminal Procedure Law. Secondly, This Chapter discusses the concept and feature of concealing evidence behavior by classifying concealing evidence behavior and comparing the features of concealing evidence behavior. Concealing evidence behavior refers to subjects except criminal prosecutor litigant, defender, agent ad litem, investigators and public persecutors suppress and conceal evidence when prosecuting criminal activities. Concealing evidence behavior infringes the legal interest of simple objects. Chapter one will clarify basic concepts for discussing the incrimination of concealing evidence behavior in the following chapters.Chapter two presents the legal basis for incriminating concealing evidence behaviors. Based on the definition of crime in Criminal Law, a crime can only be formed when having the following two features: infringement of legal interest and culpable of punishment. Firstly, concealing evidence behavior has the nature of infringement of legal interest. Not all behaviors that infringe legal interest will form a crime, only behaviors that seriously infringe important legal interest that protected by Criminal Law will be convicted. Thus, the incrimination of concealing legal interest should be limited to crime prosecution activities. Secondly, concealing evidence behavior should have the nature of culpable of punishment. The degree of legal interest infringement of concealing evidence behavior is equivalent to that of destroying and fabricating evidence. It should be noted however, that only behaviors of concealing felony evidence or exculpatory evidence will be incriminated.Chapter three presents the primary standard of behavior of incriminate concealing evidence. Based on the incrimination theory analyzed before, this chapter will discuss the incrimination standard of concealing evidence behavior via researching on the accusation system of concealing evidence crime in the current Criminal Law. Firstly, the Article 311 of Criminal Law has added the behavioral type in Amendment 9 of Criminal Law that crime of refusing to offer evidence relative to espionage crime or relative to terrorism or extremism is similar to the behavior of concealing evidence. But the difference is in the aspects of subjective culpability and the degree of confrontation between the two behavioral types. Secondly, through analyzing the constitution of the crime of money laundering, of harboring, transferring, and concealing drugs and of covering up or concealing the illegal gain, this part digs up the nature of concealing evidence of all these crimes and discusses the differences between the behavior of covering up or concealing illegal gain as well as income and that of concealing evidence in behavioral types and the infringement of single object or complex object. Thirdly, the problem is found that the existing accusation system of concealing evidence crime has constantly expanded in the crime circle via the previous analysis of the individual cases, thus the suggestion of restricting the crime circle has been proposed.Chapter four discusses about the incrimination and the restriction of the behavior of concealing evidence. This part makes suggestions explicitly about the incrimination of the behavior of concealing evidence via integrating the incrimination theory of the behavior of concealing evidence and the actual situation and standard discussed before. Firstly, adopting the approach of setting up new charges or adding behavioral type to incriminate. The crime of concealing evidence is suggested to incriminate in the crime of impairing justice in Section Ⅱ, chapter six of Criminal Law. But the coordination in the system of concealing evidence crimes should be noticed. The crime of refusing to offer evidence relative to espionage crime or relative to terrorism or extremism should be amended as the crime of concealing evidence relative to espionage crime or relative to terrorism or extremism. Secondly, the newly-set crime of concealing evidence and the articles of law that would be presented should still be under restriction as follows: the behavior of concealing evidence should be limited in the criminal proceedings, instead, the behavior of concealing evidence does not incriminate in the civil proceedings or administrative proceedings; it is the concealing of felony evidence or the innocence evidence that is talked about; following the principle of Kin Concealment. |
