An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Victim’s Forgiveness On Sentencing

Judicial procedure always revolves around the defendant which is the focus of the concept of traditional criminal justice.And the victims are in a relatively passive position in the whole criminal procedure.With the spread of the theory of restorative justice,the victims have captured increasing attention,and researches related are also heating up.Victim’s forgiveness,a victim’s behavior after the crime,is widely applied in judicial practice.However,there still exist some problems in sentencing affected by victim’s forgiveness in criminal trial.Thus it is necessary to make a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the impact of victim’ s mercy on sentencing so as to better protect the rights of victims as well as to improve the quality of criminal justice.The victim’s forgiveness not only shows their emotional attitude,but also embodies a system in which the judiciary decides whether to give lenient treatment to offenders.It is the criminal’s positive repentance,attitude towards guilt and various follow-up actions that affect whether the victims express the willingness to forgive them to the judicial organ and then affect the final judgment.The full text makes a systematic study on the impact of the victim’s forgiveness on the sentencing based on the method of “status analysis--problem discovering--problem solving”.At present,the general principles of sentencing are stipulated in Article 61 of China’s Criminal Law,and the specific sentencing provisions about the victim’s mercy are contained in the Criminal Procedure Law,various judicial interpretations and the implementing regulations of sentencing guidance in various localities.It is found that these provisions are relatively scattered,which asks the judge to look through various documents and treat them as judgment basis in cases.Besides,inconsistent leniency standards across the country also cause the sentencing unbalanced easily.And the construction of national compensation and assistance system is also needed for the system of victim’s forgiveness.In order to find out the problems in sentencing affected by victim’s forgiveness in judicial practice,the author collects 399 cases about it from China Judgements Online,and analyzes the status to judicial application of it from multiple angles.It is shown that there are such problems that cases applicable to the mercy are in confusion,the judgment is not strict enough,the form and procedure to get the forgiveness are too arbitrary,and the mercy has been considered as a tool for criminals to strive for lenient punishment in practical cases.Considered above,in order to make the sentencing affected by victim’s forgiveness more standardized and reasonable in judicial process,it is of great necessity to formulate the guidance on sentencing on the level of legal norms so as to unify the lenient sentencing,and to establish the national compensation and assistance system correspondingly.What’s more,there is also a need in practice to clarify the scope of cases where victim’s forgiveness can be applied,to determine the applicable conditions of it,to improve its judicial forms and procedures,and to implement strict supervision for the application of it,which will make the sentencing get the common aspiration of the people and make it in accord with the legal goal.