Guaranteeing the Defendant's Right to a Final Statement in Criminal Procedure
The defendant's right to a final statement is an independent litigation right different from the right of defense in nature and belongs to the content of the defendant's right to hearing.It requires not only that the defendant is able to make a full statement but also that the judge carefully listens to his statement and responds to it in the judgment document.This right has six distinct characteristics:finality,independence,comprehensiveness,irreplaceabili-ty,irreducibility,and finality.Its function has five aspects:opinion supplementation,proce-dure initiation,emphasis on the main point,attitude confirmation,and influence on judgment.The core function of the final statement is to make a judgment request to the judge,thereby af-fecting the formation of the judgment conclusion.Observed from the evidence law perspective,defendants'statements can be divided into three categories:statement of repentance,statement of innocence or pettiness of the crime,and statement of extraterritorial character evidence-all of which have a certain evidence law significance.The defendant's final statement has a strong color of formality in Chinese practice.Judges do not attach enough importance to its value:lim-iting speech time,arbitrarily interrupting the defendant's statement,and requiring written statements to replace oral statements are common phenomena.The content of the final statement is rarely touched upon in the judgment document.The causes of the formalization of the defend-ant's final statement include:firstly,defendants lack a correct understanding of the function of the final statement right;secondly,judges have an incorrect understanding of the nature of the defendant's right to make a final statement;thirdly,court trial has not yet been substantial-ized;fourthly,there are no rules on the final statement;and fifthly,the defendant's statement usually lacks evidential validity.Final statements by defendants outside the jurisdiction take three forms:an independent statement by the defendant,a joint statement by the defense coun-sel and the defendant,and equal statements by the prosecutor,the defense counsel,and the de-fendant.The defendant's final statement should be incorporated into the court debate procedure in the Fourth Amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law,so that the defendant has the opportu-nity to make a final statement before the end of the court debate.Both the Criminal Procedure Law and the judicial interpretations of the Supreme People's Court on the application of the Criminal Procedure Law have relatively simple provisions on the defendant's right to a final statement,with a total of only three articles.Because of the prominent problem of an imperfect system,the defendant's exercise of the right to a final statement has become a mere formality in practice.Therefore,it is urgent to improve the system of the defendant's final statement.
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