1. On the occasion of one year's bail pending trial, the public security organ voluntarily lifted the criminal compulsory measures, but neither closed the case nor handed it over to the procuratorate, and the case became a backlog of "suspense" cases.
Lawyers handling criminal cases know that it is difficult for Chinese mainland to get an acquittal at the trial stage. According to statistics in recent years, the probability is only a few ten thousandths. What is this concept? Judging from the professional career of a lawyer who specializes in criminal defense, even if he handles 30-40 criminal cases a year (excluding legal aid cases), this is already the limit of his career. After practicing for 30 years, he may handle no more than 1200 criminal cases in his life, which means that he may not have encountered a criminal verdict of innocence in his life. Therefore, it is more realistic for criminal lawyers to pursue the success of bail pending trial and "get people out first". Whenever I hear someone criticizing China's criminal justice system, I will stand up and defend the reputation of criminal justice, because although the acquittal rate in China is really not high, there are still many ways to achieve actual "innocence" in judicial practice, such as the non-prosecution by the procuratorate and the "reimbursement" of court decisions, all of which are substantial efforts made on the road of "innocence", and the results should be affirmed. In addition, the way to step back from innocence is to release the suspect on bail pending trial. Even if the procuratorate brings a public prosecution in the future, it will give a lighter sentencing suggestion, and the court will close the case as soon as possible and serve the sentence as soon as possible. This is also a "compromise" at this stage. Especially in recent years, the Supreme People's Procuratorate advocated "less arrest and careful arrest" and the exposure of many major unjust, false and misjudged cases, which made the procuratorial organs increasingly cautious in examining and approving arrests. For many cases with insufficient evidence, measures have been taken to obtain bail pending trial. With the success of bail pending trial, lawyers and suspects' families are relieved. According to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law, the time limit for obtaining bail pending trial is one year, which means that public security organs usually use up this time limit.
In the past, criminal cases entered bail pending trial, and the bail pending trial expired one year later. Otherwise, the public security organs collected enough evidence and handed it over to the procuratorate for prosecution, or the evidence was insufficient, and the case should be closed. However, today, when compulsory measures of bail pending trial are widely used, there are many difficulties. On the one hand, the public security organs lifted the compulsory measures of obtaining bail pending trial near the expiration of the period of obtaining bail pending trial; on the other hand, the criminal suspect was still a criminal suspect, and the case continued to be investigated, but after the investigation, the public security organs refused to accept the case and did not transfer it to the procuratorial organs, and the procuratorial organs did not investigate the responsibility. The case is "pending" in the public security organs, and it is "accumulated" according to the internal statements of the investigation organs and procuratorial organs.
Two, after the bail pending trial, several characteristics of "unsolved" cases:
1. The main reason is that the evidence is insufficient and cannot meet the evidence standard for arrest. Arrest is the most severe temporary detention measure in criminal compulsory measures, and naturally there should be no obvious defects in the main evidence level. However, the public security organ has been decided by the procuratorate not to approve the arrest in the previous application for approval. After investigation, we still can't find key evidence. This kind of case is also very embarrassing for the public security organs, so they continue to investigate in name by means of "hanging accounts".
2. In fact, the investigation has been in a state of semi-standstill, and the possibility of being transferred to the procuratorate for prosecution again is not high. There is a simple reason. If there is any key evidence, the public security organ does not need to "hang the account". During the one-year bail pending trial, the public security organs have not found any substantial evidence, and it is even more difficult to find it after one year, especially some electronic data. In some money-related crimes, many criminals borrow Internet servers to save data. These data cannot be extracted within one year, and it will definitely be more difficult after one year. Some video surveillance materials also have similar problems, and from the point of view of obtaining evidence, unless there is a major technological breakthrough, it will certainly become more and more difficult to collect evidence as time goes by. Without enough evidence, the public security organs do not want to hand over the files in the form of "bring disgrace to oneself".
3. There are remedial measures, but the suspect's family members and I are generally unwilling to use them, and they are caught in a state of "people don't lift it, officials don't investigate it". In this case, you can actually apply to the procuratorate to supervise the withdrawal of the case. After all, it has been investigated for more than a year, but the suspects and their families are reluctant to take the initiative because they don't want to "offend" the public security organs too much, and the direction of the case is not absolutely clear, and the procuratorate will not take the initiative to supervise. It is natural that the case was "suspended" by the public security organs.
Third, the reason why the case was "suspended"
This situation is actually caused by the dual functions of the thinking mode of "presumption of guilt" of law enforcement personnel and the unreasonable assessment system. With the development of law enforcement civilization, some intuitive and violent interrogation behaviors such as extorting confessions by torture have been curbed in the past. Except for a few cases, according to the author's own experience, extorting confessions by torture has basically disappeared in some developed coastal areas. On the other hand, law enforcement civilization is a process, which is bound to be opposed to the old backward factors. It is impossible for these backward factors to withdraw from the historical stage at once. Presumption of guilt is one of them. Many law enforcement officers still judge whether a person should be punished from a simple empirical point of view. Even if the evidence is flawed, they still insist on "investigation" This "presumption of guilt" has formed a working inertia. The end point of criminal investigation is to find enough evidence of guilt. Even in economic cases, the default rule of some law enforcement officers is to "solve the case before filing it", which will inevitably lead to a long delay in the case.
In addition, some unreasonable assessment indicators also contributed to the "suspense" of the case. China organs should have performance appraisal, which is made up of many factors, and the number of cancelled cases is also one of them. Too many cases have been withdrawn, which shows that public security personnel are ineffective in handling cases. Under this logic, investigators are unwilling to withdraw the case, which leads to "missing accounts" in the case.
Generally speaking, this "suspense" makes suspects and their families in a state of tension and instability for a long time, and it is also easy to waste judicial resources. Especially in the criminal investigation of some statutory punishments, it is easy to breed unjust, false and wrong cases, and any individual is vulnerable in front of the state machine. We should be alert to this phenomenon in judicial practice.