Speak with evidence -- The collection, review, and admission of criminal evidence

Author: Bao Lei, Liu Yuzhong (editors)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-02
Features: The fundamental task of criminal procedure is to punish crimes, protect the people, safeguard national security and public safety, and maintain the order of socialist society. Punishment is the most severe legal sanction and the society's last line of defense. Due to this characteristic of criminal procedure, higher requirements are placed on evidence and proof issues compared to civil and administrative procedures. In criminal procedure, evidence must meet the standard of "substantially certain and sufficient" in both quality and quantity, and the proof of criminal facts must reach the level of "clear facts" to establish the charged crime. Therefore, in criminal procedure, collecting and applying evidence in accordance with the law, and correctly using evidence to determine criminal facts, are not only prerequisites for achieving the task of criminal procedure but also an objective need to protect the legitimate rights and interests of parties involved in criminal procedure. Evidence is the cornerstone of litigation activities and the decisive factor determining the success or failure of a case. According to materialist epistemology, human cognitive ability is a unity of absoluteness and non-absoluteness. The achievements of cognition obtained by people in specific activities during a particular period and in a specific environment can only be relative truth, but they contain components and particles of absolute truth. Applying this theory to criminal procedure practice means the unity of objective truth and legal truth pursued by criminal evidence. Due to the limitations of cognitive ability, we cannot fully achieve objective cognition of criminal facts that occurred in the past. However, based on the collection, application, and review of criminal evidence, we can objectively reconstruct criminal facts to a certain extent, especially some basic criminal facts related to conviction and sentencing. Here, the objective truth can only be relative, a legal truth, not absolute objective truth. Correctly understanding this fundamental characteristic of criminal evidence is of great significance to our criminal evidence legislation and practice. Currently, many cutting-edge issues exist in the field of criminal procedure evidence. An in-depth exploration of these cutting-edge issues helps guide criminal procedure practice and improve China's criminal evidence rules. This book reveals the current issues in the field of criminal evidence that have attracted widespread attention through several typical cases, and conducts a comprehensive study in combination with China's current criminal evidence legal rules and evidence principles. The purpose is to provide some useful references for criminal judicial practice. Criminal evidence is highly professional and technical, and it is equally meaningful for the general public to understand this legal and professional knowledge. Because criminal procedure concerns the fundamental rights of the general public and the safety and justice of society, familiarity with criminal evidence knowledge and legal rules is an effective way for the general public to exercise their procedural rights, protect their legitimate rights and interests, and supervise judicial fairness. From the perspective of introducing criminal evidence legal knowledge to the general public, this book has made corresponding arrangements in case selection, wording, and analysis content, thereby achieving a balance between professionalism and popularization, knowledge and readability.