The Protection Of Victim’s Legal Rights And Interests In Incidental Litigation

Criminal judicature should base on justice and human right. The realization of justice not only means to get offenders deservedly punished. Restoring the social relationship under average and ensuring victims’ legal rights and interests are also important parts of it. But once mention penal case and human right, what occurs to most people is only the legal rights of suspects and defendants. With the progress of our society, the condition of penal defendants’ human rights has well-improved in China. However, the lawful benefits of most victims are ignored. Their essential rights to litigate and ask for compensation are not being well-protected. And they are even hard to survive. Victims become the "marginal men" in rights relief.What causes the situation is that, in traditional inquisitorial system, criminal lawsuit pays more attention to punishing criminals but less on restoring the social relationship. On the other hand, it is also because of the imperfection of those laws and regulations about incidental litigation and some related social assistance systems. Along with entering the social transition period, there shows all kinds of conflicts, and criminal cases erupt frequently too. Victims now are in great popularity, the predicament that their benefits are under poor protection is getting much more protruding and has already attracted wide concern from both society and educational circles. There is no justice if victims’ legal rights and interests can not get guaranteed. As vulnerable group, what victims do, such as petition and other extreme actions, to defend their benefits sometimes may badly hurt the court’s judicial independence and authoritativeness, and lead to the no-win situation. Hence, how to protect victims’ legal rights and interests is a serious question we should try our best to deal with in judicial practice.Victims in this essay refer to the target person whom criminal offence acts on and his relatives. In Shan’s intentional homicide, victims include Zhao and his relatives. The author takes this case as example, through the introduction of its details, trial and following-ups, to indicate the difficulties that victims encounter in incidental litigation. By analyzing the case, in this essay the author points out many problems existing in judicature and finally comes up with some advice on solving them.