Analysis On The Description Of The Situation In The Criminal Proceedings

The issuance of “description of the situation” by the investigation organ to explain the evidence or facts of the criminal cases is very common in the criminal judicial practice. “Description of the situation” can play the role in saving the judicial resources, reducing litigation costs, proving some facts, reinforcing defective evidence and enhancing the effect of the judges’ inner confirmation. Therefore, the existence of “description of the situation” has certain rationality.This paper is divided into five parts. Part One makes the brief introduction to the facts of the Lin’s intentional homicide and robbery as well as the contents of the description of the situation in the case. There are ten descriptions of the situation in the case, including the investigation detection process, capturing the criminal suspect Lin, material evidence at the scene of the crime, the lack of synchronized video recording in the three interrogations of the criminal suspect, choice of the authentication institutions, and the failure to extract mobile phone and electronic evidence detection, and so on.Part Two discusses the role of the description of the situation in the case and the problems reflected in the case. The role of the description of the situation in the case is to explain lack of evidence, reinforce defective evidence, prove the objectivity and legality of criminal investigation, rule out other reasonable suspicion, and enhance the judges’ inner confirmation. The problems of the description of the situation in the case such as the lack of specification make it easy to increase the risk of the judges’ wrong judgment, and become the tool for the investigators to elaborate prosecutors and judges, mask their dereliction of duty and even malpractice.Part Three investigates the condition of the description of the situation in the judicial practice. This part randomly selects some cases in the tried cases in the three years by the C City W Intermediate Court No.1 Criminal Division where the author is located, and analyzes the characteristics, trends and rationality of existence of the description of the situation. The characteristics reflected by description of the situation include the particular subject to issue description of the situation(investigation organ or investigators detecting the case), the narrow contents of description of the situation, stability of partial descriptions of the situation and variability of descriptions of the situation and passivity of issuance of description of the situation. There are vast disputes over whether description of the situation can be admitted as evidence and which kind of evidence it is if admitted in the theory and judicial practice. The author holds that description of the situation should be separately listed as a separate form of evidence. The trends of description of the situation include the more and more extensive contents and aspects in the criminal justice activities, higher occurrence rate of the criminal cases in the better economic development area and more and more numbers of description of the situation in the criminal cases and more numbers of description of the situation in the case that the more serious the facts are, the heavier the defendant may be sentenced to a punishment. The reasons for the vast numbers of description of the situation in the detection aspect are the limited objective conditions of investigation and evidence collection, the bondage of traditional mode of investigation, the low investigation level of investigators, outdated detection equipment, and inadequate police and police protection; The reasons for the vast numbers of description of the situation in the procuratorial aspect are the failure of the procuratorial organ to fully perform legal supervision function, failure to play the role of evidence filter and effectively excluding illegal evidence; The reasons for the vast numbers of description of the situation in the judicial aspect are that the failure to establish the mechanism for the criminal proceedings centering on the trial makes trial become a mere formality, the unreasonable performance evaluation index causes judges to place too much trust on the investigation organ and public prosecution organs and over-reliance on description of the situation.Part Four proposes the suggestions for reasonable regulation on the description of the situation. It is required to regulate, restrict and reduce the use of description of the situation, which requires the investigation organs to start from comprehensive and meticulous evidence collection, establish modern mode of investigation, improve the ability of investigators to collect evidence and quality, provide adequate police protection for criminal investigation; the procuratorial organs fully exercise legal supervision right; establish litigation mechanism centered on court trial, judges uphold the idea of presumption of innocence, adhere to the principle of procedural justice, cancel all the unreasonable performance evaluation indicators and improve the corresponding legislation and evidence rules.