CHINA-JUDICIARY: "HIDDEN RULES" OF CHINA'S CRIMINAL SYSTEM

The Dui Hua Foundation's Human Rights Journal on July 7, 2017, in a post said that Professor Chen Ruihua, an expert on criminal procedure law at Peking University Law School, in a recent blog online, observed that there are 17 “hidden rules” that govern how the Chinese criminal justice system “really” operates. He said in the Chinese criminal justice system, the “gong-jian-fa” institutions (public security, procuratorate, and courts) follow a set of “hidden rules” outside of the formal legal system and these “hidden rules” have operated over a long period of time. Professor Chen Ruihua summed up the “hidden rules” as follows:
 
                 1. The investigative organs will only file a case for investigation when that case has already been solved.
 
2. Most of the public security organ’s criminal investigation activity is completed before issuing the decision to arrest.
 
3. The vast majority of cases are only solved after obtaining a confession of guilt by the suspect.
 
4. If it were not for the purposeful restriction of the rights of defense lawyers and the extralegal detention measures against suspects, solving criminal cases would be extremely difficult for the majority of investigative organs.
 
5. Compared to plaintiffs in civil trials, the public prosecutor in a criminal trial has a far stronger appetite for “winning”.
 
6. When a case lacks clear facts or evidence, the procuratorate would rather withdraw the prosecution than allow the court to acquit the defendant.
 
7. Almost all police and procurators treat defense lawyers with a certain degree of hostility.
 
8. When a case lacks clear facts or evidence, courts will generally issue decisions that “give lenient punishment when there is doubt” or “remand for retrial;” the “presumption of innocence” is an extremely rare exception.
 
9. Nearly all first-instance trials proceed by reading the record of criminal investigation aloud.
 
10. In cases where the defendant hasn’t put forward enough exculpatory evidence, the court’s judgement is basically a kind of process to affirm the conclusions of the investigators and prosecutors.
 
11. The vast majority of criminal judges lean toward the side of prosecution and will do everything they can to avoid allowing a “guilty” defendant to escape justice.
 
12. Judgments in the vast majority of cases are reached prior to the trial process.
 
13. The vast majority of judges turn a blind eye to procedural violations of law made by police, procurators, and first-instance trial judges.
 
14. When a defendant refuses to admit guilt during the investigation or trial phases, it becomes a significant basis for the court to impose a more severe punishment.
 
15. In the vast majority of cases it is a “responsible” judge that makes the judgement decision.
 
16. Judges would rather write extremely detailed “trial conclusion reports” than provide detailed reasoning for their judgments.
 
17. Whether it is the individual police, procurator, judge, or the “gong-jian-fa” organs, each has a direct interest in how criminal cases are decided.







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