Criminal judicial assistance

Author: Cheng Liangwen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: Criminal judicial assistance is an important part of state relations and an effective extraterritorial extension of a country's judicial power. It holds significant diplomatic and judicial value. Research on criminal judicial assistance issues is of great practical significance for guiding the legislation and judicial practice of China's foreign criminal judicial assistance and regional criminal judicial assistance. This paper is divided into two parts, totaling eleven chapters. The first part is on international criminal judicial assistance, discussing its concept, scope, and procedural characteristics; basic principles guiding international criminal judicial assistance; development trends in international criminal judicial assistance; and issues such as extradition, evidence collection, jurisdictional transfer in criminal proceedings, recognition and enforcement of foreign criminal judgments, etc. The second part is on China's criminal judicial assistance, covering the practice of China's international criminal judicial assistance; the main problems and countermeasures in China's foreign criminal judicial assistance; the application of criminal judicial assistance in China's regions; key and difficult issues in China's regional criminal judicial assistance; fugitive surrender and the definition of joint judicial jurisdiction, etc. International criminal judicial assistance refers to the activities in which sovereign states, in accordance with relevant international treaties or the principle of mutual reciprocity, assist or perform certain criminal procedural or substantive rights on behalf of each other. From the perspectives of assistance content, applicable conditions, and procedures, it can be categorized into six major types: document delivery, information notification, evidence collection, extradition, transfer of criminal proceedings, and recognition and enforcement of foreign criminal judgments. As a procedural act, international criminal judicial assistance has three distinctive characteristics: coordination between international and domestic law; complementarity between treaty obligations and the principle of mutual reciprocity; and unity between judicial review and administrative review.