The Structural Difficulties of Substantive Trial and Trial Centrism
In China,the slogan"putting the trial at the center"was proposed to address the phenomenon of court trials becoming hollow or superficial.The essence lies in the materialization of court trials.The fact that court trials have become a mere formality is not only due to superfi-cial reasons such as neglecting court trials,but also stems from deep-seated issues about the lit-igation structure.These issues include the overall structure of the stage theory in China's crimi-nal litigation,the prioritization of the litigation center to the investigation stage,and the align-ment of prosecution and conviction standards.All of these have led to the diminution of the sub-stantive investigation function within court trials.Without addressing these fundamental causes,implementing superficial repairs to systems and procedures can only enhance the substantive na-ture of court trials to a very limited degree,but cannot fundamentally solve the issue of court trials becoming mere formalities.The deep structural issues of trial substantiation involve two major challenges:firstly,replacing the stage theory of litigation with a trial-centered theory and mak-ing corresponding substantive institutional adjustments;secondly,severing the direct connection between investigation and trial,and implementing the principle of one prosecution statement.Within the existing framework of the litigation settlement system,which does not address the aforementioned challenges,it is necessary to strengthen the substantive nature of court trials by introducing several systems or enhancing certain litigation rights.This includes strictly applying the principle of direct verbal communication,establishing the hearsay rule,ensuring the right to cross-examine and the compulsory appearance of related witnesses,and further improving the system of publics'participation in the judiciary.All of these measures can,to some extent,alle-viate the issue of court trials becoming hollow.In the fourth amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law,it is still difficult to achieve adjustments to the deep structure of criminal procedure.How-ever,the supplementation or strengthening of the aforementioned litigation principles,systems,and rights is both necessary and feasible in the process of functionalizing trial-centeredness.
substantive trialoverall structure of litigationone book principle of prosecu-tiondirect verbal principlehearsay rule
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
