Study On Criminal Evidence Rules

The problems of evidence are the fundamental problems during judicial action. The trial and judgment of a case are based on evidence. Because rules of evidence are the criteria, which decide what material can serve as evidence and how to collect and utilize evidence, so they have become the focus of research efforts of our country's procedure academic circle day by day. Rules of criminal evidence, rules of civil evidence and rules of administrative litigation evidence are divided according to the procedure they belong to. They have reference to each other. Kinds of evidence of them and the trial and judgment of evidence of them are in common. In Anglo-American law system, rules of evidence only are divided into rules of criminal evidence and rules of civil evidence. Because our country is used to draw a clear dividing line between one law and another law and every procedure has its own particular rules of evidence, it is very necessary that they are divided and are studied respectively. By comparison, rules of criminal evidence are featured by strict, normative and quantity and so on. In view of the particularities of criminal jurisdiction and criminal punishment, it is very important to make an intensive study and discussion of criminal evidence rules. The text is divided into three parts wholly. The first part is the general description of criminal evidence rules. It is divided into the conception of criminal evidence rules, the history of criminal evidence rules, the foreign principal rules of criminal evidence and the function of criminal evidence rules. Namely, criminal evidence rules is the group of legal norms, which decide the boundaries of evidence, and adjust and restrict justify actions during criminal action. Asking gods was the only way to uncover facts during the age of ordeal. We can not say there were no any criminal evidence rules during the age of ordeal. If only the oath prayed to the gods is considered as true and is adopted by judge, it is criminal evidence rule. Because the then criminal evidence rules had no essential scientific base, we only can say there were no criminal evidence rules in a modern sense during the period of ordeal. The judges seemed wholly to judge the cases on criminal evidence rules during the age of legal evidence. Compare and contrast trial by legal evidence with trial by ordeal, more often, trial by legal evidence showed human mind. But essentially speaking, the system of legal evidence served what federal authority requires. It was feudal and anti-scientific. The new directions of criminal evidence rules of Anglo-American law system and continental law system are clean opposite now, but, because their bases are different, the opposite direction developments are reducing the differences of Anglo-American law system and continental law system on evidence qualifications. The foreign principal rules of criminal evidence are composed of the classification of evidence rules and the principal rules of criminal evidence of Anglo-American law system and continental law system. It is a rough classification that we said the criminal evidence rules of Anglo-American law system and the criminal evidence rules of continental law system when the academic circle studied criminal evidence rules. The second part is the present situation of our country's criminal evidence rules. It is divided into the legislative present situation of our country's criminal evidence rules and the judicial present situation of our country'scriminal evidence rules. Because our country's law has no concrete, practicable and complete regulations about how to judge the proof ability of evidence, we can not have an accurate and scientific judgment just according to evidence rules; the free evaluation of evidence through inner conviction is unavoidable. It is wrong that we deny partially the behavior and effect of the free evaluation of evidence through inner conviction. Along with the legal system become more and more prefect, our criminal procedure law and judicial interpretations have prescribed a few evidence rules, which consist essentially of rule of the original that preponderate over other consideration, exclusionary rule of illegally obtained evidence, corroborating evidence rule and relevancy rule. But the piggyback provisions are all very simple. There are two mainly reasons, which the judicial present situation of our country's criminal evidence rules does not satisfy us. They are, 1. It is directly affected by the ideas that it is the most important to find the truth of the cases, or because of other reasons, the practitioner do not want to use them; 2. Because the study and legislation of our criminal action system are all still in its infancy, we do not make firm many factional and effective rules of criminal evidence or the piggyback provisions are too simple to apply, it is difficult that criminal evidence rules play their parts to the full in judicial practice. Then I took a friend of judicial circles for instance, I analyzed and pointed out, "If the diathesis of law workers can not be improved, the idea of procedure justice can not go deep into people's minds and the severity of criminal evidence rules can not be settled, the best criminal evidence ruleshave no use in judicial practice."The third part is how to make our country's criminal evidence rules better. There are necessity to make our country's criminal evidence rules better, because of the needs of restricting the right of judge's free judgment, the needs of changing the litigation opinions of the staff of our judicial organs and the needs of protecting the human rights and other important society interests. It is feasible to make our country's criminal evidence rules better, because the judge's free judgment has defects. Making our country's criminal evidence rules better is the needs of litigation, the needs that our criminal action system absorbs the party's idealism of Anglo-American law system, the need of excluding false evidence and the need of strengthening the protection of human rights and so on. Making our country's criminal evidence rules better must obey some requirements and principles. Our first task is to make our country's existing criminal evidence rules better according to the requirements and principles before studying and making firm new criminal evidence rules. Next to make the existing criminal evidence rules better, if we want to make the system of criminal evidence rules firm and better, we must at least settle exclusionary rule of hearsay evidence and free confession rule. It is very important to settle free confession rule and make it better in our country. Though we have settled exclusionary rule of illegally obtained evidence, settling the free confession rule has its independent values. The foundation that settling the free confession rule is that we give the possible criminal and the accused the right of keeping silence. If we hope the silence right operate an active effect on the construction of law and social activities, and if we hope avoid that the legislation is ahead of realism and the executive powers is lack,...