| The criminal pretrial meeting is an important part of pretrial preparations that the prosecution and defense parties convene to resolve procedural disputes and summarize the focus of disputes between the two parties after the court accepts the case before the formal trial.In the sense of the litigation stage,the pre-trial meeting is a part of the criminal trial procedure,and it is of great significance for ensuring the centralization of court trials and improving the efficiency of litigation.Because the pretrial conference has an important function of promoting the smooth progress of the trial,the major countries under the rule of law in the world have stipulated similar pretrial procedures.Although the two major legal systems have differences in litigation culture and specific litigation systems,the pretrial conference has suffered.It is generally concerned and regulated in the form of statutory law.In 2012,our country’s Criminal Procedure Law established a pre-trial conference system.The original intention of its establishment was to prepare for the court’s trial activities,focusing on resolving trial-related procedural issues,and focusing on sorting out the focus of disputes between the prosecution and the defense in terms of evidence.Improve the efficiency of court trials.In the subsequent reform of the "trial-centered" litigation system,the substantive reform of criminal court trials provided development space for pre-trial conferences,and also put forward new requirements for the improvement of the pre-trial conference system,and related theoretical explorations were also deepening.In 2018,the Supreme People’s Court issued the "Regulations for the People’s Courts Handling Criminal Cases Pre-trial Meeting"(hereinafter referred to as the "Pre-trial Meeting Rules"),which further improved the main body,format and content of the pre-trial meeting;on February 4,2021,the Supreme People’s Court of Japan issued the "Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on the Application of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China"(hereinafter referred to as the "Interpretation of the Criminal Procedure Law 2021"),and set up a special section to regulate the connection between the pretrial conference and the trial.It provides guidance for the practical operation and development of China’s criminal pretrial conference system.Nevertheless,there are many problems in the application of pretrial conferences in our country,such as the formalization and low efficiency of criminal pretrial conferences,and the lack of binding force on certain procedural issues,resulting in low trial efficiency;and the "substance of criminal pretrial conferences in our country" The "Criminal Procedure Law Interpretation 2021" further strengthens its effectiveness in solving substantive issues.This will inevitably encroach on the function of court trials and is not conducive to the realization of the substantive justice of the case.The emergence of these problems is basically due to the deviation of the function of the criminal pretrial conference,which violates the principle of centralized trial.Based on this,it is necessary to re-examine the function of the criminal pretrial conference,reposition the function of the pretrial conference based on the principle of centralized trial,give full play to the function of the pretrial conference to resolve procedural disputes,and ensure the efficiency of the trial;Substantive issues such as evidence exchange,display,and sorting out the focus of disputes are only conducted without any substantive judgments.On the basis of reasonable positioning of the function of the pretrial conference,the subject and content of the conference are refined to ensure the smooth progress of criminal trials. |
