Research On The Verbal Evidence Of Minors In Criminal Cases

Recently,cases of crimes of sexual abuse of minors and crimes of abuse of minors have attracted the attention of society.The use of verbal evidence of minors in such cases often becomes a problem in handling cases.At present,China has not yet formulated a special evidence law,and the relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law and related judicial interpretations on minors’ verbal evidence are relatively few,and only abstractly stipulate the basic principles of collecting and reviewing minors’ verbal evidence,and lack specific rules to follow in practice.China’s jurisprudence on evidence is scattered and does not have a systematic framework;relevant research is also fragmented and unsystematic.This article examines the collection and review of minors’ verbal evidence in China’s judicial practice,and examines the rules for the collection and review of minors’ verbal evidence in light of the experiences and practices of some other countries in this area,to explore how to maximize the role of minors’ verbal evidence in criminal cases,while avoiding harm to minors and maximizing their interests.This article includes the following.The first part is an empirical investigation of minors’ verbal evidence in criminal cases,which aims to examine the present legislative and judicial situation of minors’ verbal evidence in China and analyze the causes.At present,there is a lack of regulations on the collection and review of minors’ verbal evidence in China,the practice of "one-stop" evidence collection has not been reflected in the legislation,the criteria for examining minors’ ability to testify and the way to review the credibility of minors’ verbal evidence are not clear enough,and the criteria for judging whether minors should appear in court are not clear enough.Based on the data statistics and problem analysis of 40 cases,it is found that in judicial practice,the collection procedures and examination methods of minors’ verbal evidence are not technical,standard and scientific,and the protection of minors in court also needs to be strengthened.The second part is a psychological examination of minors’ verbal evidence in criminal cases,which analyzes how to improve the professionalism of minors’ verbal evidence in terms of collection and examination from a psychological perspective.A scientific response to the problem of collecting and examining minors’ verbal evidence requires first distinguishing the characteristics of the differences between minors’ verbal evidence and adults’ verbal evidence.Because of these differences,we should attach importance to the proper use of questioning techniques and examination methods when collecting and examining minor’s verbal evidence.In the collection of minors’ verbal evidence,attention should be paid to the emotions and stress of minors,and open questions should be used as much as possible;in the examination of minors’ verbal evidence,attention should be focused on the possibility of wrong and false verbal evidence of minors at different ages,and minors’ verbal evidence should be examined with the help of professional methods.The third part examines the extraterritorial experience of the collection and review of minors’ verbal evidence.The first is about the collection of minors’ verbal evidence.In the United States,the collection of minors’ verbal evidence is conducted through forensic interview procedures,using professional forces and professional institutions to improve the quality of questioning;in Canada,minors’ verbal evidence is recorded quickly after the crime by means of video-recorded interviews to guarantee a comprehensive record of minors’ true memories.The second is about the review of minors’ verbal evidence.Most common law countries,such as the United States,England,and Australia,have established a voir dire process for minors to determine whether a minor has the ability to "properly express" and "distinguish between right and wrong" or to determine whether a minor has the ability to provide sworn evidence.In other countries,the examination of the probative force of a minor’s verbal evidence is conducted through special rules of evidence or specialized examination techniques to improve the scientific nature of the examination.For example,some countries have set exceptions to the rule of corroboration evidence to relax the standard of review of minors’ verbal evidence;some countries have set exceptions to character evidence rule to relax the scope of admissible evidence in such cases;and some countries have improved the quality of review of minors’ verbal evidence in such cases through professional review techniques such as Statement validity assessment(SAV).The third is about the protection of minors in court.Many foreign countries provide court appearance protection to improve the quality of minors’ verbal evidence and protect minors.In the United States,the United Kingdom and other countries,court schools and witness services provide minors with courtroom education before court to ease the pressure of minors;the United Kingdom,Australia,Canada and other countries provide minors with various special protection measures in court,equipped with testimony aids and support personnel to provide assistance to minors.The fourth part of the paper is the suggestions for improving the collection and examination of minors’ verbal evidence.First,to improve evidence collection,this paper believes that the scientific nature of evidence collection should be improved by improving the interviewing environment,perfecting the interviewing techniques and methods,and reinforcing team of evidence collection.Secondly,we should establish a procedure for examining minors’ ability to testify,and clarify the contents and standards of examination;improve the rule of corroborative evidence,and expand the scope of corroborative evidence as much as possible;establish character evidence rule,and pay attention to the role of social investigation reports of minors’ victims and witnesses in supporting the case;establish a system of psychological counselors and social workers to accompany minors,and use the professional knowledge of psychology to examine minors’ verbal evidence;distinguish the way of reviewing minor victims’ statements and minor witnesses’ testimonies,set different review priorities,identify wrong verbal evidence and exclude false verbal evidence.Finally,we should clarify the specific ways of testifying out of court,such as establishing a "one-stop" evidence collection and examination procedure and allowing minors to make video testimony out of court;meanwhile,we should improve the protective measures of testifying in court,give minors auxiliary tools and personnel to testify,and reduce the pressure of minors to appear in court,so as to improve the quality of verbal evidence.