Qualitative Research On The Behavior Of Helping Relatives Hide Crime Evidence

The crime of helping to destroy evidence,which is classified into the judicial sin,is a new crime of 1997 criminal law amendment.The aim is to safeguard the normal activities of judicial authorities,fight crime timely and effectively and maintain the social public order.Before the establishment of this crime,the behavior of destroying evidence is identified as the crime of shielding.Due to the ambiguity of legislation,however,the boundaries of the two crimes are blurred.In addition,the definition of them is not comprehensive in theory so that there are some disputes about the determination of the two crimes in judicial practice.At the same time,the cases that the close relatives of the parties help them destroy,conceal the criminal evidences occur quite often in the judicial practice.Its’ specific characteristics have attracted much attention.The criminal law of our country has not yet treated the "close relatives" differently in harbor crime,but theorists call for this for a long time.In this paper,the writer use the representative case "Linmoumou helps to destroy evidence" to analyzes the controversial issues in the process of identifying the crime of helping to destroy the evidence so as to solve the judicial application of similar cases.This paper consists of four parts.The first part is the basic situation of the case,including the name of the case,the brief introduction of the case,the disagreement and the controversy.The introduction is Lin Moumou helped his father who committed traffic offence conceals the vehicle in order to escape the liability of the judiciary.The disagreement is how to determine the behavior that helping relatives to conceal the evidence of crime.The controversies include: How to determine the behavior of concealing the evidence and the close relatives help the parties to conceal the criminal evidence can be treated differently.The second part is the theoretical analysis of this case.This part is the basic theory part and the core part of this paper.First,the author analyzes the key problems of the crime of shielding in the criminal law of our country.The conclusion is that "the criminal" refers to the person who is listed as the object of investigation and whose criminal suspect is strong from the view of objective;"False evidence to shield" refers to the behavior that one provides false written or verbal evidence by intentionally misleading or providing false evidence so that the criminals can evade or reduce legal liability.Second,the author analyzes the key problems of the crime of helping to destroy evidence.It is concluded that the "party" includes parties involved in criminal、civil and administrative proceedings and those who are likely to be involved in these three types of litigation;"Destroying evidence" means any act that may lose or reduce the loss of the evidence’s probative value;"Serious circumstances" refers to the evidence the perpetrator destroy is of great significance and the behavior hinders the normal order of the judicial authorities.Third,the author makes a comparation between the two sins,concluding that "False evidence to shield" and "Destroying evidence" does not belong to the containing relation but is two independent behavior.Finally,problem of helping relatives conceal evidence is analyzed.Come to conclusion that this act should also be in accordance with the crime.The third part is the conclusion and the analysis of this case.The author combines the legal analysis with the case,concluding that: The family members are not excluded from the crime subject of crime of helping to destroy evidence,so we can’t consider Lin Moumou innocent.Besides,LinMou both belongs to "the criminal" in the crime of shielding and belongs to the "party" in the crime of helping to destroy evidence;The behavior that Lin Moumou helped his father hide the accident car belongs to "destroying evidence" rather than false evidence.Therefore,LinMoumou constitutes the crime of helping to destroy evidence.The fourth part introduces the enlightenment of the case.The situation that help the close relatives destroy the evidence usually happened in the trial activities.The author thinks that it is necessary to treat it differently.The author also puts forward some legislative proposals to further improve the crime of helping to destroy evidence in this part.