Investigation And Reflection On Criminal Corroboration

In the process of judicial certification,The specific application of corroboration has become the focus of attention in the theoretical and practical circles.With the continuous improvement of criminal evidence rules,the development of criminal evidence has gone through four stages.The first is the stage of gestation and germination from 1991 to 2004.The second is the stage of birth and development from 2004 to 2010.The third is the stage of unifying laws from 2010 to 2015.The fourth is the stage of theoretical reflection since2015.Based on the 166 cases in Criminal Trial Reference,this paper summarizes the empirical data and analyzes the cases in depth.It isn't difficult to find that the object of corroboration is the relationship between evidences and that the premise of corroboration is that the evidence must has the evidence capacity.In China's criminal justice,There is the common form which considers the corroboratory relationship between verbal evidences as the core.If verbal evidence is used as the basis for classification,the cases can be divided into four types.The first type is “corroboration of the defendant's confession” that the key to the case is the corroboratory relationship between defendant's confession and other evidences.The second type is “corroboration of defence” that the key to the case is the corroboratory relationship between defence and other evidences.The third type is “corroboration of the accomplice's confession” that the key to the case is the corroboratory relationship between accomplice's confession and other evidences.The forth type is “corroboration of the victim's statement/the testimony of witness” that the key to the case is the corroboratory relationship between the victim's statement/the testimony of witness and other evidences.Of course,in the specific application of corroboration,we should uphold the correct attitude of “there are no immutable rules for proof”.Regarding the phenomenon of one-sided understanding in practice,we should take the following measures.First of all,we should attach importance to the corroborating effect of “process evidence” on “result evidence”.Secondly,we should distinguish the relevance between the level of evidencecapacity and the level of evidence weight.Thirdly,we should understand the corroborating effect of covert evidence correctly.Fourthly,we should be cautious about the corroborating effect of witness' s statement of guilt.Last but not least,we should consider“beyond a reasonable doubt” as a complementary role to corroboration.