Research On Reversing Problem In Pleas Of Guilty And Acceptance Of Punishment

In October 2018,the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment were incorporated into the newly revised Criminal Procedure Law,leading to an end of a two-year trial.From the relevant reports issued by those pilot areas and the Supreme People's Court,the author finds that,among appellants(defendants),protest(procuratorates),and the plaintiffs(victims)in the civil suit collateral to criminal proceedings,reneging on previous commitments does occur based on either the reports by the pilot areas or the summary statistics.In addition,from a chronological perspective,the appeal and protest rates of defendants,procuratorates,and plaintiffs in the civil suits have increased,according to the data of the pilot areas,after adopting the criminal rapid procedures as well as extending the scope of applicable cases.Various parties' litigation behaviors in the process of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment not only burden the procedural lawsuit but also prevent the reform from achieving its purposes of simplification and diversion,as we can see from the example of going back on the negotiation results of confession and punishment.Under such situation,it is of great importance to clarify the definition of right to renege,its nature,and its components.Regulating how to exercise the right to renege in accordance to parties and stages is essentially a risk assessment of current practices.In doing so,we may address certain issues that arise in the current confession and avoid potential risks in future implementation.Therefore,when making specificrecommendations for the right to renege,this article considers the provisions of the current system.The author hopes to provide useful suggestions to police departments,procuratorates,and People's Courts on implementing the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment.The structure of this paper is as follows:The first chapter defines what is the right to renege in the process of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment.To begin with,the author summarizes the data of reneging negotiation results of confession and punishment,including the data from some pilot areas and from the summary statistics.The data are compared vertically and horizontally.Second,this research sorts out the incumbent rules that are related to right to renege,describing how the legislature and judicial agencies understand this matter.Third,by analyzing the nature of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment and the nature of confession,this study argues that it is necessary to have regulations over the right to renege.Then,the author discusses the definition of right to renege and its components in the views of different parties.The second chapter examines the rights to renege in other countries and regions.The first section introduces the U.S.plea bargaining system and the second section talks about the German "confession negotiation" and "penalty order" procedures.The third section looks at Chinese Taiwan in which the guilty plea negotiation system was introduced in 2004.Subsequently,the chapter points out how the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment in our country can learn from these cases by comparing rights to renege in these three countries and regions.It pays particular attention to institutional differences among their criminal procedure laws and the regulations over evidence adoption once renege takes place.The third chapter starts the discussion from the viewpoints of defendants,the most critical party in the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment.It classifies situations where defendants renege on commitments into two categories,namely retracting confessions and appealing.Grounded in this classification,the research proposes to protect the voluntariness of confession by providing sufficient resources for legal assistance,establishing an evidence disclosure system,adhering to statutory standards of proof,protecting the rights of duty lawyers,and clarifying thelegal basis for clemency.After that,the chapter divides its discussion based upon whether the reasons of reneging are legitimate.Consequently,the chapter further suggests how to deal with defendants reneging confession and appealing in terms of criminal justice processes,entities,and evidence.The fourth chapter shifts the gear to the prosecution system in the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment,declaiming that procuratorates' right to regene has a special nature of legal supervision.The chapter first discusses the roles of the procuratorates in exercising right of renege.First,it can assure the correct implementation of the rules of Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment.Second,it can suppress defendants' uses of right to renege.Third,it helps protect defendants' rights by institutionalizing the uses of right to renege.Then,the chapter concludes four ways of procuratorates exercising right to renege with emphasis on the nature of legal supervision and clarifications on the uses of relevant powersThe fifth chapter deliberates the issues of victims' renege.Compared with its counterparts of crime suspects,defendants,as well as procuratorates that have learned experience from the pilot test,victims' exercise of right to renege has little pilot experience or regulative documents.Moreover,there are few references that can be gained from other countries and regions.Therefore,taking into account the special criminal litigation structure that gives the victim the status of criminal prosecution in China,and the litigation economy demand for Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment,the last chapter.discusses the necessity of establishing regulations over the uses of right to renege in the Pleas of Guilty and Acceptance of Punishment system.Additionally,it explicates that the victims' exercise of right to renege should rely on the procuratorates and the People's Courts.