1. Is it necessary for a lawyer to be present when pleading guilty?
Confession of guilt and punishment does not necessarily require the presence of a lawyer, but requires judicial confirmation. Those who meet the conditions can be given a lighter punishment. Pleading guilty and accepting punishment leniently means that the criminal suspect and defendant voluntarily and truthfully confess their crimes, have no objection to the alleged criminal facts, agree with the sentencing opinions of the procuratorate and sign a written statement, and can be lenient according to law. Leniency can be divided into entity leniency and program simplification. The defendant may apply the expedited procedure to the trial of a case that is under the jurisdiction of the grass-roots court and may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of less than three years. Summary procedures may be applied to cases under the jurisdiction of grass-roots courts that may be sentenced to more than three years in prison. In the course of the trial, if the defendant objects to the application of this procedure, or there are other circumstances that are not suitable for simplifying the trial, the people's court shall turn it into an ordinary procedure according to law. This is procedural leniency.
Two, the defendant pleaded guilty to a lighter punishment case for summary trial procedures.
As a prerequisite for the application of summary trial, defendant's confession has special substantive and procedural significance. Trial efficiency is one of the important yardsticks to measure whether a country's criminal proceedings are scientific and civilized. All countries in the world generally regard litigation efficiency as an important value pursuit of criminal litigation. In addition, in view of the increasing number of cases in China in recent years, how to deal with cases quickly and fairly has become the goal pursued by the judicial department. Among them, it is a common practice in all countries to realize the procedural diversion of cases based on the defendant's attitude towards the charges, and it has become a reality in China to simplify the trial based on the defendant's confession.
The performance of the defendant's confession in simplified trial is that the defendant has no objection to the basic crime accused and voluntarily pleads guilty, that is, the defendant has no objection to the basic facts accused or admits the main facts accused. No-objection facts focus on "basic", "important" and "main" facts. Whether it is "basic", "important" or "main" depends on whether it is related to conviction and sentencing. Only when there is no objection to the relevant facts of conviction and sentencing can the defendant plead guilty. If there are objections to the facts of the case related to conviction and sentencing, indicating that the defendant has great objections to the alleged facts, the defendant cannot be considered guilty and the summary trial procedure is applicable.
In practice, summary trial procedure shortens the preparation time before trial and simplifies a series of trial steps. The defendant may no longer confess the criminal facts alleged in the indictment, and the interrogation and inquiry of the defendant by the public prosecutor, defender and judge may be simplified or omitted. For the evidence without objection, both the prosecution and the defense can only explain the name of the evidence and the matters to be proved, and the court can authenticate it in court. Such cases can generally be pronounced in court. The simplification of these trial procedures has obviously accelerated the trial speed. Cases that used to take half a working day can now be concluded in about 1 hour, and many cases can be concluded in 10-20 minutes. Basically, they were pronounced in court, and there was basically no protest, revision and retrial. For cases with a large number of defendants and complicated facts, the judicial efficiency has been improved. It not only eased the backlog and delay of court cases, ensured the quality of handling cases, but also realized the defendant's right of speedy trial to a certain extent.
Confession and punishment need to be decided by the judiciary. Lawyers can provide legal services according to the legal service contract signed between them and the parties, and the specific matters of lawyers appearing in court also need to be handled according to the actual confession, depending on the actual situation.