Judicial Application Of Exemption From Criminal Punishment

It is stipulated in the article 37 of Chinese Criminal Law that criminal punishment may be exempted if the circumstances of a crime are minor and no penalty is required.However,according to the different circumstances of the case,it may be admonished or ordered to make repentance,apologize for compensation or compensate for losses,or the competent department may impose administrative punishment or administrative punishment.This is the provision of our criminal law on exemption from criminal punishment.The occurrence of the exemption from criminal punishment break through the concept of penalty with punishment for crime and it is one important supplementary approach to achieve criminal responsibility and the significance is not fully known in the practical and theoretical circles.According to the provision of Chinese criminal law,exemption from criminal punishment means that the court exempts the perpetrator from the legal sanction of the nature of punishment while convicting him according to law for the slight reason of the crime when the acts of the perpetrator constitute a crime.In addition to exemption from criminal punishment,there are similar provisions in our criminal law,such as exemption from punishment,non-investigation,non-punishment,no criminal punishment,no criminal responsibility and no criminal responsibility.However,according to the specific context in which these concepts appear,they are different from each other before.On the premise of application,no criminal punishment,no criminal responsibility and no criminal responsibility belonging to the perpetrator do not constitute a crime,while exemption from criminal punishment,exemption from punishment,non-investigation,non-punishment constitute a crime just because the circumstances are minor or criminal policy reasons do not impose penalties.Therefore,these provisions applied in the court are different in the evaluations of the perpetrator is varied in the evaluation of law,but the same perpetrator would not face with penalty sanction in the end.The features of exemption from criminal punishment are criminality and expelling punishment;meanwhile,other criminal consequences are not exempted necessarily.There is essentially different from Article 13 of the Criminal Law.There are two application conditions of exemption from criminal punishment: first is the minor criminal circumstances and the second is no need of sentence.The minor criminal circumstances are based on the judgement of crime,while there are three opinions on the judgment of the seriousness of crimes in the theoretical circle,including formal standard theory,substantive standard theory and comprehensive standard theory.The minor circumstances of exemption from criminal punishment should be considered at the same time the specific circumstances stipulated in the statutory maximum penalty and judicial interpretation of the crime.The main considerations for the application of exemption from criminal punishment are the restoration of social relations and the purpose of criminal law itself.It could be found in the investigation on the application of exemption from criminal punishment in judicial practice that the application rate of exemption from criminal punishment is very low on the whole,but it is over-high in the application rate of partial crime.It is mainly manifested in the crime by taking advantage of duty,while the applicable standards are not uniform in different places.The reason should be owed to the traditional focus on penalty doctrine in China,impacts of the concept of punishment for crime and the unclear application conditions as well as the lack of supervision mechanism.Therefore,the opinion of focus on penalty should be changed and the diversified thought of criminal legal consequences should be built up.The judges' discretion should be stipulated and the supervision of exemption from criminal punishment by prosecutorial organization should be strengthened.The internal supervision mechanism of court should be perfect.So that,the fairness and justice of judicial activities could be promised.