Not long ago, the Shenzhen Municipal People's Procuratorate of Guangdong Province, handled by the Jiang Mou and other 157 people in the case of large-scale contract fraud in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court hearing. Earlier, the court decided to apply the system of leniency in pleading guilty and accepting punishment after a careful review of the case. In the end, 149 suspects voluntarily pleaded guilty and signed a recognizance. As most of the defendants pleaded guilty and accepted the facts of the alleged crimes, the charges, and the sentencing recommendations, the trial, which was originally scheduled for 45 days, was completed in just 14 days.
It is reported that since the official launch of the pilot plea bargaining leniency system for criminal cases in November 2016, as of December 2017, prosecutors at Guangzhou and Shenzhen levels*** applied the plea bargaining leniency system to deal with 18,354 cases and 20,465 people, of which 17,280 prosecutions were filed for 19,222 people, accounting for 49.61% of the number of prosecutions filed in the same period. The courts adopted sentencing recommendations for 13,680 people, with the rate of adoption of sentencing recommendations at 94.46%, and 99 people appealed in sentenced cases***, with an appeal rate of only 0.63%.
Peng Zhangbo, director of the Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate's Public Prosecution Department, said that Guangdong's practice has proved that, as an important initiative to implement the policy of leniency, the system of leniency of guilty pleas and punishments has a large number of cases, a wide range of types of cases, a high rate of acceptance of the allegations, the rate of protests and appeals is low, and so on, and it can effectively save judicial resources while solving the social contradictions and safeguarding fairness and justice.
Professionalized intelligent case handling, judicial quality and efficiency significantly improved
The formation of a specialized team to carry out professional case handling is an important way to improve the efficiency and quality of the plea leniency case handling. Under the guidance of the Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate, the pilot courts, in conjunction with the judicial reform, selected the business backbone to set up a specialized case handling organization for plea bargaining cases.
In the pilot, the Guangzhou Huadu District People's Procuratorate designated two entry-level prosecutors to specialize in plea bargaining cases, and equipped them with two assistants and two clerks to do auxiliary work, using 15 percent of the case-handling power to handle nearly 60 percent of the cases, and shortening the average cycle of handling cases by 70 percent.
The reporter learned that the Guangdong procuratorial authorities will plead guilty and punishment work with modern information technology in-depth fusion, the use of remote video arraignment, video sessions, the means of handling the case of science and technology combined with the centralization of the case steps.
Guangzhou Nansha District People's Procuratorate using remote video arraignment system, two days a week to focus on remote arraignment, the case period shortened by about two or three working days; Panyu District People's Procuratorate of Guangzhou City, the application of remote video arraignment, twice a week arraignment, arraignment of more than 20 people each time, than the ordinary arraignment efficiency by four times, the prosecution from the trial to the trial of the average interval has been greatly reduced to 7 days.
Specialized, intelligent case management so that the quality of justice greatly improved. According to the statistics of Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate, for cases handled by the leniency procedure of guilty plea and punishment, the average time spent in the investigation stage is 39.19 days, the average time spent in the examination and prosecution is 16.1 days, and the average time spent in the trial is 20.17 days, which is significantly lower than the average time spent in the ordinary cases, and the long-standing irrational phenomenon of inverting the period of detention with the term of imprisonment has been effectively solved, and the problem of delay in the litigation has been reasonably solved.
Protecting the legitimate rights and interests of all parties and safeguarding social justice
"Guaranteeing that criminal suspects and defendants plead guilty and accept punishment under the voluntary premise is the key to the implementation of the system of leniency in pleading guilty and accepting punishment." Peng Zhangbo said, to this end, the Guangdong procuratorial authorities to establish and improve to independent rights to inform the procedure, strict plea voluntary legality review procedures, listening to lawyers and other procedures as the core of the norms to ensure the voluntariness of the plea of guilty and punishment system.
The Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate specifically emphasized that the notification of rights must be an independent procedure in the process of reviewing and prosecuting cases, and that it should be reflected and expressed in the corresponding litigation documents. Case review process, to focus on the review of the case file material criminal suspects voluntarily plead guilty. Arraignment of criminal suspects, focusing on interrogation of the investigative stage of whether the voluntary confession of guilt, the investigating authorities to obtain evidence whether the procedure is legal, whether there is torture to extract confessions and other illegal acts.
Guangdong prosecutors clearly stipulated that the opinions of victims or their close relatives and legal representatives should be heard in cases of leniency in pleading guilty, and that whether or not an understanding agreement is reached between the defendant and the victim should be taken into account as an important consideration in drawing up a recommendation on sentencing, so as to fully safeguard the rights and interests of the victim.
In May 2017, Guangzhou Municipal People's Procuratorate Procurator General Ou Mingyu served as the public prosecutor, Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court President Wang Yong served as the presiding judge, and publicly tried a major criminal case applying the system of plea bargaining and leniency of punishment, and took the initiative to invite deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) to the courtroom to observe, the first national precedent of a sub-provincial city's Procuratorate Procuratorate Procurator General for plea bargaining cases.
In practice, the Guangzhou Municipal Procuratorate has established a regular supervision mechanism, joint courts, public security organs, the whole process of plea bargaining cases for synchronous audio and video recording, the whole process of the proceedings, to ensure the legality of the criminal process.
Peng Zhangbo said: "We emphasize that, when handling cases of guilty plea, should be in strict accordance with the legal provisions of the evidence refereeing requirements, even if the suspect pleaded guilty to punishment, but there is no other evidence or believe that the facts are not clear, the evidence is insufficient, should adhere to the principle of the suspicion of the crime from the absence of the principle of efficiency, and effectively do both more important fairness."
Sentencing recommendations are accurate and objective, the adoption rate reached 94.46%
Guangdong plea leniency case sentencing recommendations adopted rate of 94.46%, not only in the national pilot areas at the leading level, but also much higher than the general criminal cases sentencing recommendations adopted rate. This is due to the Guangdong procuratorial authorities vigorously promote the sentencing advice precision mechanism and intelligent decision-making system.
Peng Zhangbo said that in the pilot, Guangzhou and Shenzhen prosecutors adhere to the principle of the application of criminal responsibility and punishment specific, lenient and lenient criminal policy judicial, sentencing recommendations intelligent decision-making, focusing on preventing inappropriate sentencing, sentencing imbalance and other issues, exploring sentencing incentive mechanism and sentencing recommendation precision mechanism, the implementation of graded sentencing recommendations to achieve sentencing justice with precision.
Guangzhou Nansha District People's Procuratorate uses big data to crack the problem of precision in sentencing recommendations, using software programs to organize and enter the judgment documents within the jurisdiction, and initially establishing a database of judgment documents through machine learning and fuzzy search methods. Prosecutors can easily retrieve similar judgments within five years through fuzzy searches of crimes and circumstances as a reference for sentencing, and make relatively reasonable sentencing recommendations to ensure that "the same case, the same sentence".
The reporter noted that the introduction of artificial intelligence in the sentencing decision-making process to assist the system software, is to achieve the objective of sentencing, an important means of accurate goals, is the Guangdong pilot plea leniency system is an important initiative.
The Guangdong Provincial People's Procuratorate specializes in the establishment of sentencing assistance system, the use of big data to improve the accuracy of sentencing; Guangzhou, Shenzhen requires the conditions, the basis of the basic level of hospitals through the development of sentencing assistance software, and gradually establish a database of common case verdicts, the use of software to capture and analyze the relevant verdicts within the jurisdiction of the effective instruments sentencing plot data, assisting the prosecutor to put forward the precise sentencing in line with the merits of the case, regional balance The company's website has been updated and is now available for download.