#刑事辩护 #
#法律人举案普法 #
1. What is a confession?
What is a confession of a criminal suspect or defendant (commonly known as a confession): A statement made by a criminal suspect or defendant to investigators of the case-handling organs about the guilt of his or her actions.
What is justification: a statement that one's conduct constitutes a crime or a minor offense.
2. Legal knowledge of confessions
(1) Subjects and number of interrogators: Investigators, not less than two.
(2) Location of interrogation: It can only be conducted in the prescribed case-handling venue; after a criminal suspect is sent to a detention center for detention, the interrogation shall be conducted in the detention center's interrogation room and the whole process shall be recorded or videotaped simultaneously.
(3) Restrictions on referral to outside the detention center: Investigative organs must not bring criminal suspects outside the detention center for interrogation on the grounds of stolen goods, identification, and so forth.
(4) Legal procedures for interrogation: The first interrogation shall inform the procedural rights and the legal provisions on leniency in admitting guilt and accepting punishment.
(5) On the issue of audio and video recordings: At present, public security organs have audio and video recording equipment in case-handling venues, and every interrogation will have audio and video recordings of the whole process, especially in detention center interrogation rooms.
(6) Inconsistent confessions: There are inconsistencies between the in-court confession and the pre-trial confession. How to deal with it? The first situation: Where the defendant retracts his confession during trial, but cannot reasonably explain the reason for the retraction or his defense contradicts the evidence in the whole case, and his pretrial confession is corroborated with other evidence, his pretrial confession may be accepted. The second situation: where there is a repetition of the defendant's pretrial confession and defense, but the confession is made during the trial and is corroborated with other evidence, the defendant's trial confession may be accepted; in the third case: the defendant's pretrial confession and defense are repeated, and the confession is not confessed during the trial, and there is no other evidence corroboration with the pretrial confession, the pretrial confession must not be accepted.
(7) Stable confessions: Under normal circumstances, stable confessions will make it difficult for criminal suspects or defendants to overturn them.
(8) The issue of repeated confessions: Or repeated confessions, refers to investigators using torture to extort confessions to induce criminal suspects or defendants to make confessions, and then the criminal suspects or defendants are affected by the act of extorting confessions by torture and make the same repetitive confessions as the confessions. Duplicate confessions should also be excluded.
(9) Exceptions to repeated confessions (repeated confessions). There are two situations: 1. During the investigation stage, the investigating organ confirms or cannot rule out the use of illegal methods to collect evidence and replace investigators, other investigators are informed of the procedural rights and legal consequences of admitting guilt when interrogated again, and the criminal suspect voluntarily confesses; 2. During the period of reviewing arrest, reviewing for prosecution and trial, procurators and adjudicators are informed of their procedural rights and the legal consequences of admitting guilt during interrogation, and the criminal suspect or defendant voluntarily confesses.
(10) Confessions obtained by torture into confessions (extorting confessions by torture): Illegal evidence is excluded.
(11) Threatened confessions: Illegal evidence, to be excluded.
(12) Confession: Confession is that the person undertaking the case tells and discloses the facts of the case, especially the details of the crime, to the object of investigation, and forces him to confess according to his own intentions, so that a person who does not know the facts of the case at all narrates from his mouth the facts of the case that only the person who committed the crime can know, and becomes the "real murderer". The occurrence of all unjust, false and wrongly decided cases is closely related to the accusations, which are the most fundamental reasons for the occurrence of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases. There are even suspects who have to look at the answers to answer questions.
(13) Corroboration of confessions of different criminal suspects or defendants: If the possibility of extorting confessions by torture, accusations of confessions, collusion of confessions, and so forth is excluded, the probability of being determined is extremely high, especially where the confessions of different suspects or defendants to the details constituting the same crime are consistent or similar, it is easy for the adjudicators to produce psychological evidence and make a determination.
(14) Corroboration of confessions and other evidence such as physical evidence and documentary evidence: This is necessary to determine the authenticity of the confession.
(15) Evidentiary validity of confessions obtained by administrative organs: Because the subject of evidence collection is not an investigator, the statements of the parties obtained by them cannot be directly regarded as confessions of criminal suspects, and generally need to be converted into criminal procedural evidence, and upon investigation and verification, they can only be used as the basis for a verdict.
III. Evidentiary Status of Confessions:
In judicial practice, the investigative organs attach great importance to confessions, and confessions play a very important role. Legally obtained, authentic, and relevant confessions have the function of stringing together non-verbal evidence such as physical evidence and documentary evidence. At the same time, a confession is also the best evidence of the subjective intention of the criminal suspect or defendant.
Can a confession be directly used as a basis for conviction?
Confessions of criminal suspects and defendants are one of the types of evidence in criminal proceedings provided for in the Criminal Procedure Law; in fact, confessions can play a role in proving subjective malignancy and subjective knowledge. At the same time, confessions can also be linked to other evidence and corroborate each other. The specific situation should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
5. Can a confession be convicted without evidence?
Where only the defendant confesses and there is no other evidence, the defendant cannot be found guilty and punished. (Article 55 of the Code of Criminal Procedure)
6. Can no confession be decided?
Where there is no confession from the defendant, and the evidence is credible and sufficient, the defendant may be found guilty and sentenced to a criminal punishment.
In practice, there are also many cases of zero confessions that have been decided.