On The Problems And Reform Of Criminal Jury System In China

Criminal jury system is a national judicial system which absorbs non-professionaljudges in the criminal justice system in the trial of cases, it has judicial democracy andpolitical democracy dual properties. In our country the criminal jury system means thatordinary citizens are selected in accordance with certain procedures to become the peoplejurors who take participate in the national criminal justice activities with professionaljudges, exercise the powers of judgment in criminal justice system, is a special type ofassessor system. Criminal jury system is an important judicial system, which has achievedsome practical implementation. However, since the system in terms of the jurors electiveway, qualification and term of office, financial compensation and recognition ofprovisions, the rights and responsibilities is not reasonable while lacking of supportsystems, that it can not achieve the desired effect, even raised about the abolition of thejury system in criminal dispute in academia. As an important part of the people’s jurysystem, the criminal jury system is an effective way for citizens take part in the criminaljustice activities directly, and it can make the spirit of the rule of law to infiltrate into thepsychological and behavioral patterns of ordinary people subtly; at the same time, thecriminal jury system is also beneficial to maintain the judicial justice, to prevent and curethe udicial corruption and to establish the judicial authority, so it should be adhere to thesystem and reform it.There are two possible modes to reform the criminal jury system: the people’s jurymode which imitates the Anglo-American jury system and the people’s assessor modewhich imitates the Japanese citizen judge system, the latter mode is more better for thestatus-quo of Chinese judicature. In process of the reform, it should be taken thatnarrowing the scope of the jury system in cases which on the death penalty and lifeimprisonment in criminal cases only; relaxing the eligibility restrictions of the jurors andexpanding employment bans; using the current identity management systems andscheduling list of juror, changing the elective way that "recommendation plusself-nomination"; cleaning up the "hearing specialist", establishing the "tenure system" that is a combination of term plus the number of cases; drawing lessons from Japanese’s"3+6" and "1+4" form of collegiate bench, implementing "limited super-majority" in orderto improve composition of collegiate bench. At the same time, it’s also important to detailthe rights of people’s assessor, to explicit the participation obligation and attend theobligation of people’s assessor as well as to improve the social soil which the people’s jurysystem rooted in. There will be a new way which is suitable for the development of ourcriminal jury system in practice gradually.