Reflection On Legalization Of Types Of Criminal Litigation Evidence

Articles 100 and 101 of the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2021(hereinafter referred to as the Interpretation of the Criminal Procedure Law)give the reports and accident investigation reports issued by people with specialized knowledge the status of criminal evidence.These two provisions have become the export of the legalization system of criminal litigation evidence types,and also triggered the reflection on the reform of the legalization system of evidence types.Under the system background of trial-centrism,the principle of evidence adjudication has become an important legal principle to realize this grand vision.As an important part of the principle of evidence adjudication-evidence capacity and evidence rules,both of them conflict with the legalization of evidence types in essence.Therefore,under the background of trial-centrism and the impetus of the Interpretation of the Criminal Procedure Law in 2021,the trend of breaking away from the shackles of the legalization system of evidence types has become increasingly obvious.This paper is divided into four chapters,which are theoretical elaboration,current situation analysis,overseas investigation and reform path.The text is as follows:The first chapter is the theoretical exposition of the legalization of types of evidence,starting with the development process of the system,showing the process of legalization of types of evidence from closed to open through the development of legislation and judicial interpretation;Then it analyzes the theoretical status quo of the system from the perspective of existing academic disputes,and summarizes the focus of the above disputes in the last part of this chapter.The second chapter is the analysis of the current situation of the legalization of types of evidence.First,through practical cases,it shows the real situation of the legalization of types of evidence in practice,mainly including the phenomenon of "extra-legal evidence" and the situation of "extra-legal evidence" being questioned heavily.Then,through these two aspects,it summarizes the practical dilemma encountered by the system and analyzes the causes of the dilemma.From the perspective of litigation mode,The refined distinction method under the authority doctrine has become the direct cause of the system’s difficulties in practice.At the same time,the record centralism derived from the investigation centralism is also an important factor,but the most fundamental reason lies in the evidence system itself,that is,the function of the evidence system has been alienated,that is,from the original "restricting the evidence ability" to "strengthening the evidence ability of investigation files".The third chapter is the investigation of the system of types of evidence abroad,which mainly draws the representative countries of Anglo-American law system and civil law system in terms of classification(or types)of evidence,such as Britain and America in Anglo-American law system countries,France,Germany and Russia in civil law system countries.The purpose of investigating the extraterritorial evidence system is to learn from its strengths.Generally speaking,China’s criminal evidence system can learn from the attention paid by Anglo-American law countries to the rules of evidence and the advocacy of civil law countries to the concept of freedom of evidence form.The fourth chapter is the reform path of the legalization system of evidence types in China.Generally speaking,it should develop in the direction of de-legalization,but this is not only a matter of legislative technology,but also the change of macro-concept plays a very important role.In the transformation of thinking paradigm,we should rectify the deficiency of investigation centralism and strictly implement trial centralism.Among them,the effective way to implement trial centralism is to implement the principle of evidence adjudication,which inevitably involves the introduction of the relevant evidence capacity system and the construction of the evidence rule system.Along with the change of ideas,it is the change of legal norms.Considering that the Criminal Procedure Law of 2018 will be implemented soon,in the near term,we can expand the existing types of evidence through legal interpretation,including theoretical interpretation and judicial interpretation.In the long term,the existing system can be abolished by amending the Criminal Procedure Law or enacting the Evidence Law.