Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2015

The Optimization of Criminal Evidence System in China

(Abstract)

Zhang Dong

In recent years, legislation on criminal evidence in China has been enriched increasingly, with a criminal evidence system preliminarily formed. From the perspective of application of the two important evidence rules of the standard of proof for “beyond reasonable doubt”and the exclusion of illegal evidence, however, the legislation on criminal evidence did not reach its objective. One reason behind this phenomenon is related to the application of law or the implementation of system, but more importantly, it is because no optimal configuration has been carried out for the evidence system. The optimization of evidence system does not mean to deny the existing evidence system in China; rather, it means instead, based on the existing system and observing the rule of application of evidence, to optimize the settings of evidence rules at the level of legislation, eliminate unreasonable factors hindering the application of optimization of evidence system, and thus fulfill the optimized operation of evidence system and reach the objective of criminal litigation. For the optimization of evidence system, legislation should define the rules of evidence in a common sense, some critical rules of evidence should not be absent, and priority should be given to preset rules of evidence. That matches better with the core values of the principle of trial centered criminal procedure and the principle of evidentiary adjudication.