Criminal cases, sent to the procuratorate, usually have two situations:
1. After the first stage of investigation, if the public security organ considers it necessary to take arrest measures against the suspect, it shall request the procuratorate to approve the arrest. At this time, the case goes to the procuratorate, and the investigation and supervision department of the procuratorate generally makes a decision on whether to approve the arrest within 7 days;
2. The public security organ completes all investigation activities and transfers the case to the procuratorate, and the public prosecution department of the procuratorate examines and prosecutes. Next is the stage of review and prosecution.
So, what role can lawyers play in these two situations? Let me tell you separately:
In the first case, that is, the arrest stage, lawyers have two main functions:
1. Meet with the criminal suspect, fully understand the details of the case through the meeting, provide targeted legal training to the parties, inform them of their litigation rights, and make them strive for favorable conditions for themselves, so as to avoid taking unnecessary responsibilities due to arbitrary retraction. For example, in an online fraud case, when asked by the public security organ "Did you participate in the xx planning meeting", the criminal suspect will generally only answer "participated". In fact, his so-called participation is just taking minutes of the meeting, and he has no chance to speak at all, let alone the power to make the final decision. At this time, I will persuade him to confess completely, saying that although he attended the meeting, it didn't have much effect, paving the way for him to win over his accomplices in the future.
2. Put forward legal suggestions to the procuratorate around the facts and laws of the case to stop the arrest. In the investigation stage, lawyers can't see the case file and don't fully understand the evidence of the case. At this time, experienced lawyers can generally rely on their own experience in handling cases to predict the direction of the case, and the personnel of the investigation and supervision department of the procuratorate also have this ability. Therefore, after the meeting, lawyers can usually communicate smoothly with prosecutors on the facts and legal issues of the case. At this time, lawyers try their best to win the procuratorate's disapproval of the arrest for the parties, which will be more effective than the family members of the parties themselves proposing to change the compulsory measures of bail pending trial.
In the second case-in the stage of examination and prosecution, in addition to the two mentioned above, lawyers play a more important role-defending from evidence and fighting for innocence, misdemeanor or misdemeanor results for the parties. In the stage of examination and prosecution, the law gives lawyers the right to read papers (others don't), that is, lawyers can go to the procuratorate to check all the materials related to the case at this time. After the lawyers read the papers, professional lawyers can make a general judgment on whether the parties are guilty, whether they should be convicted by the public security organs, and whether there is a lighter or mitigated punishment. After making a preliminary judgment, if the evidence that can prove the guilt of the parties is flawed, the lawyer can see it and put forward cross-examination opinions to the case-handling organ. For the evidence that can prove that the parties are lighter or innocent, lawyers comprehensively sort it out and integrate it into legal opinions or defenses to strive for the due interests of the parties.
For example, in a telecom network fraud case I handled last year, the party was accused of fraud, and the amount of fraud was 5 10000. Later, it was discovered that my client only cheated 485,000 by reading the examination paper, which did not exceed the threshold of "extremely huge amount" of 500,000. In addition, 230,000 of the 4.85 million profits were returned to the victim before the incident, and should not be counted as fraud according to law. I put my point of view to the procuratorate, which recognized my first point of view but not the second, so I found the works of laws and experts and scholars around the second point of view and put it to the procuratorate again. Finally, the procuratorate recognized that the indictment only identified 255,000 frauds.
To sum up, when the case comes to the procuratorate, I don't know how much role lawyers can play, but I know lawyers are useful. Whether to hire a lawyer is a matter of opinion.