The whole process of Simpson's wife murder trial embodies the principle of procedural justice. Here is only a description of the main program.
(1) The composition of the jury in this case embodies the principle of procedural justice. Jury system is a unique system in Anglo-American law. In cases that should be tried by a jury according to the law, the jury has the right to participate in the court trial and make an independent ruling under the auspices and guidance of the court. The court can only exercise its jurisdiction after the jury makes a verdict, and the nature of the verdict must be consistent with the nature of the verdict. In other words, if the jury finds guilty, the judge can make a guilty verdict; Otherwise, even if the judge agrees, a guilty verdict cannot be made.
(2) The principle of procedural justice embodied in the rules of evidence. As the saying goes, "evidence is the king of litigation", but not all evidence courts will adopt it. American law stipulates that not only the subject, type and source of evidence required to be provided are legal, but also the procedures and means of collecting evidence must be legal. Otherwise, even if the evidence is objective and true, it cannot be ruled out as the basis for conviction and sentencing. When trying criminal cases in common law countries, the standard of proof is "beyond reasonable doubt". In other words, the jury can only find the defendant guilty if it is convinced that the evidence meets the standard of "excluding reasonable doubt". Therefore, in criminal trial, even if some evidence is accepted by the court, it may not be able to convict the suspect. In the trial debate of this case, Kirk, a defense lawyer, talked about playing the race card and repeatedly quoted the racist insults and attacks of foreman police officer in front of the jury, while Scheck, another defense lawyer, emphasized the carelessness of police technicians in collecting evidence and how the evidence was polluted and unreliable. Although none of these questions can prove Simpson's innocence, they are enough to convince people that the prosecution's evidence does not meet the unquestionable standards of the black majority jury. Finally, after four hours of deliberation, the jury made a verdict of Simpson's innocence.
Procedural justice is different from substantive justice, which is mainly reflected in the design of legal procedures and the process of judicial adjudication. It is a clear, concrete and operable procedure, a formal moral constraint on judges and parties, and belongs to "visible justice".
The establishment of the principle of procedural justice is mainly based on the following three reasons:
First, based on the theory that human nature is evil, it advocates restricting the use of power by state officials. In the western cultural tradition, people tend to think that there is no perfect person in the world and the essence of human nature is evil, so no one can guarantee that the police and judges who have judicial power will not abuse their power, which inevitably requires designing a reasonable procedure to limit the use of power.
Second, individualism in Britain and America requires full protection of civil rights. Compared with the supervisors who represent the country and can use the state finance and state coercive power, the personal strength is undoubtedly very weak. In order to fully protect citizens' personal rights, the criminal procedure law of the common law system stipulates a series of protections for citizens' personal rights, such as the principle of "presumption of innocence" and the principle of "excluding reasonable doubt".
The third is the discovery of the independent value of the program. This is mainly reflected in the following two aspects: first, substantive justice can not be accurately grasped, while procedural justice can be "visible", so litigation procedures can make up for the shortcomings of substantive law under certain conditions; Second, fair litigation procedure can enhance the rational image of litigation, which is conducive to the spread of ideas such as democracy, equality and the rule of law, and make the judgment easily recognized and respected by the public.
Through the Simpson case, we can clearly see that the American judicial system attaches great importance to procedural justice and conclusive evidence, which goes far beyond seeking the truth of the case and bringing criminals to justice. Some people may say that paying attention to procedural justice does not necessarily lead to substantive justice. But it is precisely because of the fairness of this procedure that we can avoid the abuse of state public power and truly give people a sense of security.
Compared with the emphasis on procedure in Anglo-American criminal law, China's traditional legal concepts and systems all emphasize entity over procedure. The famous case of She Xianglin's wife killing illustrates this point well. She Xianglin went to prison for killing his wife. 1 1 years later, the victim's wife suddenly appeared and the case was retried. She Xianglin was acquitted by the court and returned to society. Although there is a saying in the law that "late justice is not equal to injustice", how many years have passed since 1 1? Even if he returns to society, the imprisonment of 1 1 year will prevent She Xianglin from returning to a normal life for the rest of his life. In real life, in order to obtain the confession of criminal suspects, legal procedures are violated, and even confessions are extracted by torture, so that citizens' personal rights and freedoms are trampled on at will and human rights are not respected as they should be. The crux of all this lies in China's emphasis on substantive justice, ignoring the judicial concept of due process. It only regards procedure as a means to realize substantive justice, but ignores the independent value and great significance of due process itself.
Since the revision of the Criminal Procedure Law, procedural justice has received unprecedented attention. Whether it is to write "respecting and protecting human rights" into the general principles of criminal procedure law and implement it in some sub-rules and system perfection, or to insist on the stipulation of "it is forbidden to extort confessions by torture and collect evidence by threats, enticements, deception and other illegal methods", to add "no one shall be forced to prove his guilt" and to implement the audio-video recording system in the interrogation process, it means that the independent value of due process is increasingly valued by our judicial practice.