Study On Fatigue Interrogation In Criminal Proceedings In China

Deprived of normal rest and sleep time,interrogants fall into a state of physical pain and mental breakdown.Their basic cognitive level drops and they lose the will to resist.As a result,they are influenced by the investigators and make confessions against their true will.In the practice of investigation,fatigue interrogation includes night interrogation,long interrogation and atypical fatigue interrogation.This method of interrogation severely violates basic human rights and may lead to false confessions,leading to wrongful convictions.Fatigue trial is a substantial violation of the current criminal procedure law,which reduces the legal authority and damages the justice value of criminal procedure.Deep analysis of fatigue interrogation leads to the frequent occurrence of this interrogation method for many reasons.First,the current detection system has defects.Public security organs are under great pressure to solve cases within a certain time limit,and the performance appraisal system is the most prominent performance.Many work contents are measured by digital standards,ignoring the objective investigation rules.The investigation method of the investigation organ is single,and the phenomenon of case-to-person is quite serious.In the whole process of litigation still highly rely on oral confession,oral confession centralism prevails.Secondly,the exclusion of illegal evidence is still a difficult problem in China's judicial practice The current law only stipulates in general terms that confessions obtained in fatigue interrogation should be excluded,but does not make a specific definition of fatigue,which makes interrogation activities have no standard to be based on.Fatigue interrogation can be a quick and effective breakthrough for confession,and will not cause obvious physical injury,compared with traditional torture behavior is not easy to be found.In the course of interrogation,the investigation organ neglects the subject status of the criminal suspect's lawsuit and only treats him as the source of evidence.Thirdly,at the present stage,the power distribution of the three organs of public security law is out of balance.Under the investigative centralism,the court's trial activities are reduced to going through the motions.Even if the judge considers that the investigators have conducted illegal evidence collection activities such as fatigue interrogation,it will be difficult for them to make a decision to exclude illegal evidence because it cannot be proved.Finally,the mechanism of supervision and restriction is missing.The focus of judicial practice is mainly on violent confession.Compared with the traditional methods of violent interrogation,fatigue interrogation was not regulated in the beginning because it was difficult to leave traces on the body and prove.The self-supervision of the investigation organ is in the form of internal petition,which is supervised by the person in charge at a higher level in writing.The external restriction comes from the procuratorial organ and the defense party.Because of the cooperation among the three organs,the procuratorial organ seldom restricts the investigation.In China,defense lawyers have no right of presence during interrogation and cannot effectively supervise the investigation.According to the above forms of fatigue interrogation and its origin,the future prevention mechanism in China's criminal proceedings can be established from the following aspects.First,make clear the standard of fatigue interrogation in our country.Through the study of comparative law outside China,some countries have defined the time limit of fatigue interrogation and measured whether it constitutes fatigue interrogation according to the duration of interrogation.In some countries the criterion is the lack of voluntariness of confessions with no clear time-frame.Based on China's judicial practice,the form of stipulation principle plus exception is more in line with China's national conditions.Second,make up the defects of the investigation system.In order to eliminate the influence of confession centralism in our country,we should use a variety of investigation methods and interrogation methods.Third,the re-allocation of public security law three organs of power.At the present stage,the trial-centered litigation system reform is under way,reconstruction of the relationship between investigation,prosecution and trial,to improve the status of the court in the criminal proceedings,reduce the strong position of the public security organs.Fourth,improve the supervision and control mechanism.The internal supervision and restriction of investigation organs should be strengthened,and case handling personnel should supervise each other.At the same time,after the evidence obtained from fatigue trial is excluded by the court,the person in charge of investigation organs should also be held accountable accordingly.The external supervision and restriction can be considered from the establishment of the supervision mode in the prosecutor's trial and the exploration of the establishment of the lawyer's presence system so as to effectively supervise and restrict the interrogation activities.