Research On The Ruling By Criminal Collegiate Panel

According to the Article 178 of the Criminal Procedure Law,the majority of criminal cases in China are handled by collegiate panels;only the first-instance criminal cases that are ruled by grass-roots courts in summary procedure can be legal targets for exclusive courts.During the process of commenting and voting for cases,judges from collegiate panels put forward their own views on them in a "face to face" manner and make the final judgment in a simple majority voting rule.This kind of ruling is actually a special form of group decision making.Considering that the outcome of the ruling involves mainly in the probability of the defendant's guilty,the line that "the person inside the incidence is blinded by the incidence" has to come true,if you research the ruling of criminal collegiate panels merely from the perspective of law.Prof.Shaw in the United States organized a series of experiments about ruling process and proved that when making decisions,members of group can correct each other's mistakes to improve the accuracy.Therefore,it is reasonable and legitimate for China to hear most of criminal cases by collegial panels(rather than single courts).Although the following results of Western scholars' researches show that Dictator technique can improve the accuracy of group decision-making,it is inappropriate for the judicial practice in our country.And among other five decision-making methods,such as Delphi technique,Nominal Group technique,Dialectic technique,Consensus technique,and Collective technique proposed by Western scholars,Delphi technique and Nominal Group technique are the most helpful ones in improving the accuracy of the ruling of criminal collegiate panel in our country.Since the Delphi technique is more able to increase the judges'satisfaction with the verdict in the latter methods,it is more worthy of our study and reference.As for the outcome of the ruling,countries in the whole world mainly deal with conviction,sentence,and other procedural matters of criminal ruling through unanimously ruling rule,strict majority voting rule,simple majority voting rule,and relative majority voting rule.In general,the stricter the voting rule appears,the more correct the result is,but the more judicial resources it occupy.In order to balance the different requirements between fairness and efficiency of criminal justice in ones,own countries,they often adopt different voting rules to solve the three issues above.As the sentence and other procedural matters is less important than conviction,countries generally adopt simpler voting rules such as simple majority voting rule and strict majority voting rule.When it comes to conviction,since it is vital to the future and fate of the defendants,legislators in various countries are more cautious and rigorous in their choice of voting rules.In order to fully grasp the relationship between voting rules and conviction,lawmakers can use the Bayesian formula as an important analysis tool.This formula can establish a mathematical model between different voting rules and the corresponding accuracy of conviction.By introducing different voting rules into the formula,we can understand the corresponding changes and rules in that accuracy,and,as a result,make the best choice.To sum up,on the one hand,we should insist on the current legal regulations,handling most of the criminal cases in collegial panels,and draw on the research conclusions of decision-making psychology to improve the ruling process of our criminal collegiate panels.Among these conclusions,Delphi technique deserves our attention especially and corresponding pilot works.On the other hand,we should also avoid ruling all the criminal cases in simple majority voting rule,as we used to do.And we should build a fair and efficient voting rules system based on different voting rules and the calculation results of the Bayesian formula.