On The Right To Know Of Criminal Suspects

After World War Two, a general consensus toward human rights protection was reached worldwide and the concept of rights protection penetrated into all fields of social life, including the criminal litigation field. As the accuser has natural advantages in criminal litigation, the legitimate rights and interests of the criminal suspect are easy to be impaired. As an important part of the basic rights of criminal suspects, the right to know is a powerful weapon in protecting the rights of criminal suspects from the impairment of public rights. Therefore, the establishment of the right to know in criminal procedure has extremely vital signigicance in protecting the rights of criminal suspects.Though the history of the concept of the right to know is relatively short, its spirit of monocracy has a very long history. As early as in the 18th century, western countries have guaranteed the citizen’s rights to know about national and social affairs in their legislations. With the development of human rights protection, the term "right to know" came into being after WWII, when western countries made the right to know into law one after another and stipulated specifically its contents, establishing it as the citizens’legal rights. Only after the reform and opening-up did China begin to learn and introduce the advanced concept of law of foreign countries, including the bringing in of the right to know in criminal litigation field. There is no denying that the establishment of right to know in criminal litigation field has great significance, because it meets the specific requirements and is the embodiment of human rights protection in lawsuit. The establishment of it can not only guarantee effectively procedural justice and substantive justice, but also can prevent the abuse of judiciary power and safeguard judicial justiceAt present, the system of right to know of criminal suspects in foreign criminal field is constantly improving, and has formed a complete legislative system. These countries include Britain and the United States, which belong to the Anglo-American Legal System, and Germany and French of the Continental Legal System. They have lots of similarities in the legislation of the right to know, for example, the protection systems of right to know, the clarification of the contents of criminal suspects’right to know, and the setting up of procedural punishment measures. These similarities represent fully the mature legislative skills of foreign countries and can provide effective reference for us to protect criminal suspects’ right to know.In comparison, there are still many problems in the system of criminal suspects’ right to know of our country. Though many clauses of criminal litigation law represent the spirit of law of protecting criminal suspects’right to know, there aren’t specific and detailed regulations of the contents of right to know, let alone a complete protection system. Besides, criminal suspects’right to know about the evidence materials before court hearing isn’t guaranteed, so that they can only read the evidence material during the court hearing and definitely cannot make a favorable self-defense. In the administration of justice, lack of procedural informing exists in some regions for all kinds of reasons during the investigation, examination and prosecution stage, which leads to the illegal infringement of criminal suspects’right to know in judicial practice.No legal system’s construction is a smooth path and the establishment of the right to know system is no exception. To construct a perfect right to know protection system, works need to be done in both the legislative and the judicial parts. On the legislative front, firstly we need to establish the protection system of criminal suspects’right to know, and then specifically regulate the contents of right to know, including criminal suspects’knowing of evidence materials. Apart from these, procedural safeguarding measures need to be built in legislation and exclude the illegally obtained evidences with the exclusionary rule. Injustice, we need to improve the legal qualities of judicial personnel and guarantee their provision obligation of procedural informing.