On The Rational Dimension Of Sentencing Evidence

On October1,2010,"Opinions of Some Problems about the Standardization of Sentencing Procedure (for Trial Implementation)", hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions of Sentencing Procedure", issued jointly by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice, was tried in the country. With this, reform on standardization of sentencing procedure has been carried out in the country like a raging fire. The realization of sentencing justice is generally key point of the people’s court work and general requirement of people. The sentencing justice on the defendant needs to be established on the basis of sentencing evidence. The judge should deals with the relationship between sentencing and evidence with his own reason, examines the sentencing evidence from multiple perspectives and analyzes comprehensively the information covered by evidence from rational dimension, for the rational has been regarded as an important principle to measure the relationship between evidence and sentencing. Subjective mental activities of individuals should be transformed into objective rules which reflect criminal procedural requirements to provide tension and fresh air for our rational thinking on sentencing evidence. The use of rational is helpful to control experience and make objective the judge’s evaluation process, to minimize the sentencing imbalance caused by the judge’s ability, experience, character, personality and understanding of law. Judges should not only discern the strict legal logic system, but also grasp the technology about interpretation of law, legal reasoning, legal argumentation, measure of interests.Rational character is the judge’s proprietary occupation character, and in a certain sense, the judge plays the role of voice of reason. The judge should operate with reason to restrict the power of discretion. A reasonable judgment on sentencing evidence is also through the effective judicial operation mode。The independent sentencing procedure mode provide a broad space to play for the discretion of the judge, is conducive to the judge to grasp more sentencing information, especially the comprehensive investigation of discretionary circumstances of sentencing. Comprehensiveness and integrity of the collected information is useful to make quality of cases more stable, and judgment documents more reasoning. only so, the judicial justice can be reflected in front of people in a more visible way. Judicial authority is slowly built up in this way, and the rule of law in China will be more smoothly.With the research of cases with a high degree of social concern in past few years, more attention to sentencing shall be paid. The two defendants’ ending is not the same although with the same surrendered plot, and so it is a tough question how to ascertain and adopt the sentencing evidence about surrendering? We should say that justice should not only be in every case, but in comparison of different cases. The way to analyze the sentencing evidence can be acquire from the typical case. There are several ways.First, the role orientation of the sentencing evidence; second, the objective cognitive sentencing evidence; third, the rational thinking of sentencing evidence. the integration and the comprehensive evaluation of the information resources of sentencing evidence are followed. First, the independent sentencing procedure provides a display platform for sentencing evidence; second, rational analysis of sentencing evidence transfers case information; third, outside factors of the sentencing evidence should be taken seriously. Finally, internal rationality between sentencing evidence should be fully evaluated. The rational design of the sentencing evidence is carried out through several ways about the reasonable operation of discretion. It should include methods and steps, metric definition, characteristics of different cases, independent sentencing procedure. The discretion aims at the need of justice in particular situation through creative justice, the change from inflexibility to flexibility of law and the change from conservativeness to opening in considering the fairness, which reduces the rigidity and unfairness of law. The task of judges is not only to follow the law rigidly to safeguard the unity and stability of law, but includes correctly ascertaining and adopting the sentencing evidence and rational operation of discretion in sentencing through seriously analyzing the information from cases and abiding by the right criminal thinking and the lawful and reasonable judicial procedure.