Research On Witnesses Appearing In Court In Criminal Cases

The problem of witnesses appearing in court in criminal proceedings has always been one of the unsolved problems in practice.Since the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China put forward the reform of taking trial as the center,it is required to strengthen the implementation of evidence in court.The core of the trial centered reform is the substantiation of the trial,and the criminal trial in which the witness does not appear in court can not really achieve the substantiation of the trial.From the pilot situation and the investigation results of the grassroots courts,the witness attendance rate has not increased significantly,and the data comparison has not found any obvious changes.The trial centered reform seems to have entered a bottleneck period.In order to solve the problem of witness appearing in court,this paper,guided by real cases,combined with empirical perspective,explores the current situation and existing problems of witness appearing in court since the reform.First of all,the definition of key witness is not clear,which makes the rate of key witness appearing in court is not high,which leads to the limited value of the witness appearing in court to cross examine,and does not achieve the expected effect of applying to appear in court.The accurate input of key witness can maximize the quality of appearing in court.Secondly,although the new "Criminal Procedure Law" and the "Three Regulations" encourage witnesses to appear in court,the protection of witnesses in court is not enough,resulting in frequent retaliation against witnesses,lacking the basic protection of witnesses in court.The establishment of a special witness service agency and the establishment of a new witness appearing in court system can well alleviate the problem.Finally,when the witness does not appear in court but is the key witness in this case,how to exercise and limit the right of the witness to refuse to appear in court? Therefore,we should improve the specific operation of the system of compulsory witness to appear in court.Compared with the western countries which compare the witness appearing in court to paying taxes and performing military service,the witness appearing in court in our country still has a long way to go.The appearance of witnesses in court not only helps to discover the facts of the case,but also is a problem to be solved on the way of judicial reform in China.It is an effective guarantee of the defendant’s right to cross examination,and also the key to the real realization of court confrontation.