A Study On The Improvement Of The Rules Of China’s Vulnerable Witness System From The Perspective Of Comparative Law

As a unique group of witnesses,vulnerable witness has attracted the attention of criminal procedure law in many countries.Vulnerable witness testimony is a category of statutory evidence,on the one hand,it has the function of true discovery,on the other hand,it has the vulnerability of distortion,and there is the necessity of special rights protection to vulnerable witnesses.Under the background of "promoting the reform of the trial-centered litigation system",improving the rules of vulnerable witnesses is of great significance for the true discovery of judicial evidence and the protection of human rights,for improving the principles and norms of criminal judicial evidence,and for promoting the civilized development of the International Court of Justice.According to the experience rule,vulnerable witnesses usually do not have the complete ability to discern right from wrong and express their will properly,the Criminal Evidence Law requires a cautious acceptance of their statements,The probative force of such statements can be confirmed only in cases where other evidence corroborates each other.Therefore,in the face of the defects of vulnerable witnesses’ testimony,corresponding rules should be formulated so as to give full play to their litigation functions.In general,the legislation of criminal evidence law in China is lack of rules of vulnerable witness system.Even though there are some rules about minors witnesses and victims of sexual assault,there are not systematic and comprehensive.It can be known by examining the status of our country’s vulnerable witness system that the current legal norms of our country can not solve the special problems of vulnerable witness in criminal proceedings.Vulnerable witness to testify is still faced with the lack of targeted interrogation procedure rules and scientific interrogation methods to adapt to different types of vulnerable witnesses,the lack of independent professional expert interrogators and vulnerable witness testimony review procedures.And the protective measures and psychological comfort mechanism for testifying in court are difficult to implement.In order to ensure the effectiveness of the evidence of vulnerable witnesses and realize the litigation purpose of human rights protection,it is necessary to introduce such systems as extraterritorial intermediary system,statement validity assessment mechanism and prerecording system.They may have important enlightenment on how to build the specialized evidence rules of vulnerable witnesses in our country.The essential parts are the construction of the special inquiry rules,special protection rules and testimony quality rules of vulnerable witnesses,which including timely inquiry mechanism,training of specialized interrogators,etc.In general,the regulations should be specific from two aspects of procedure and technology,so as to promote the scientificity and rationality of the penal evidence of vulnerable witnesses testimony.