▐ Written by Li Xiaoyao The Fangshan District People's Procuratorate of Beijing
"Confrontational" interrogation refers to the interrogation method of investigators in the process of interrogating the suspect and confronting the suspect in the process of interrogating the suspect, and obtaining the confession and defense of the suspect.
This interrogation method is different from the interrogation strategy. It allows the suspect and the victim to have the opportunity to confront each other during the investigation stage, thus breaking the closed of the investigation and interrogation. It is regarded by some investigators as an important means to quickly obtain the suspect's guilt confession.
This method of handling cases can certainly improve the efficiency of investigation and interrogation in a certain sense, but there are the following problems:
. No basis in law ➤ At the level of principle, Article 3, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Procedure Law of my country clearly stipulates:
"When the people's courts, the people's procuratorate and the public security organs conduct criminal proceedings, they must strictly abide by the relevant provisions of this Law and other laws."
thus established the principle of procedural statutory in my country's criminal legislation.
➤ At the specific rules level, Article 118 of the Criminal Procedure Law stipulates that "interrogation of criminal suspects must be carried out by the People's Procuratorate or the investigators of the public security organs", thereby clarifying the subject of interrogation ;
Article 120 of the Criminal Procedure Law and Article 198 of the "Provisions of the Procedures of Public Security Organs to Handle Criminal Cases" specifically stipulates the basic procedures for interrogation of criminal suspects;
In addition, Article 249 of the "Provisions of the Procedures of Public Security Organs to Handle Criminal Cases" stipulates that in order to ascertain the case, when necessary, investigators can let the victim identify the suspect .
Accordingly, the investigative agency must conduct interrogation in accordance with the procedures stipulated in the above provisions, and the investigators must conduct relevant contents such as the identity information of the suspect, punishment, confession or defense of whether there is a criminal fact. The victim has the right to identify the suspect, but this identification has the characteristics of indirect contact, and the law does not allow the victim to have a direct meeting with the suspect. Therefore, during the "qualitative" interrogation, the practice of investigators allowing victims to intervene in the interrogation procedure obviously lacks legal basis and does not comply with the basic requirements of the statutory procedures.
2. It is inconsistent and understandable
(I) "Confrontational" interrogation breaks the closedness of the interrogation program
Investigation interrogation As one of the important methods of investigation, it has relatively secret and closed characteristics. This is determined by the pre-in-progress of the investigation stage: the pre-in-progress of criminal proceedings, and the quality of the investigation directly determines the quality of the evidence in the case, which in turn has a significant impact on the subsequent review, prosecution and trial process.
In order to ensure the quality of investigation, the investigative agency must fix the evidence in a timely and comprehensive manner to prevent the occurrence of concealment, destruction of evidence or collusion of investigation such as the leakage of investigation information, such as concealment, destruction of evidence or collusion, etc. Therefore, investigative behavior often needs to be kept secret and closed.
"Quick-to-Character" interrogation method breaks the secret of investigation and interrogation. The victim is neither an investigator with the right to participate in the interrogation, nor a practicing lawyer with confidentiality obligation, nor a translator with auxiliary functions. The law does not stipulate the relevant procedures for the victim to participate in the interrogation process, nor does the victim have the legal obligation to not disclose the case handling situation. The rash involvement of the victim in the interrogation process increases the risk of investigation information leakage, which may have an adverse impact on the collection and fixation of subsequent evidence, thereby reducing the quality of case investigation.
(II) "Quality-type" interrogation violates the spirit of individual interrogation
interrogation alone is a common practice in developed countries with rule of law. my country's criminal investigation procedures also comply with this rule.
Article 179, paragraph 2 of the "Procedures for Handling Criminal Cases of Public Security Organs" clearly stipulates: "Interrogation of criminal suspects in the same case should be carried out individually."
" here should be understood in two ways:
one is . If there are multiple suspects in the same case, each suspect should be interrogated separately. Two or even more suspects should not be allowed to be interrogated at the same time to prevent the suspect from interfering with each other to testify;
two is . When interrogating the suspects, it is not allowed to be investigated except for the investigators and relevant personnel who can be present as stipulated by the law. Other personnel participate in interrogation.
The principle of individual interrogation is that the confession and defense of the suspect is essentially an externalized manifestation of cognition, which includes the process of perception, memory and expression of objective things. Therefore, in some cases, for the same incident, the suspect and the victim may have different cognitions due to individual differences, and the meaning they express may be completely opposite.
Furthermore, objectivity is one of the basic attributes of all forms of evidence, verbal evidence guest The objectivity is reflected in the fact that the provider of evidence can only provide evidence on the facts of the case they perceive personally, and cannot publish speculative, commentary or inferential verbal evidence. In this way, the verbal evidence itself has a more obvious subjectivity and is therefore volatile and irreplaceable.
Based on the above principles, the purpose of investigation and interrogation is not to let one of the parties change the verbal evidence by confronting the suspect and the victim, and then obtain more consistent evidence, but to objectively and comprehensively fix it through the statutory evidence collection procedure. The evidence from both parties provides a basis for fact determination for investigation, review and prosecution and trial activities.
(III) "Confrontation" interrogation is essentially an embodiment of presumption of guilt
In the "Confrontation" interrogation, the reason why the suspect and the victim were arranged to confront the suspect during the interrogation stage is that the investigative agency does not believe in the confession and defense made by the suspect, especially the evidence provided by the suspect in his own favor. "Expose" the lies of the suspect. The investigative agency compresses the space for the suspect to defend himself by allowing the victim to directly confront the suspect, forcing the suspect to tell the true situation of the case as soon as possible, thereby improving the efficiency of investigation. From this we can see that the "confrontation" interrogation method exposes the preconceived ideas of investigators, which is the continuation of the concept of presumption of guilt and should be stopped.
3. In practice, any litigation system that may cause false and wrong cases must at least be at a certain level. If you want to operate normally, it must at least be a certain level. The above claims that he has discovered the truth and can discover the truth to the greatest extent. Discovering the truth means being closer to substantive justice. So, can confrontation and interrogation better discover the truth and achieve substantive justice? The answer is no.
Take the case of Liu Moumou suspected of fraud, which the author participated in handling as an example. At the beginning of the interrogation of the investigators, the suspect insisted on denying his fraud, but the investigators deeply questioned and refused to record the confession of the suspect.
In order to break through the psychological defense line of the suspect as soon as possible, During the first interrogation process, the investigative agency asked the suspect to confront the victim. Later, the suspect "truely confessed" his crimes according to the victim's statement during the investigation. During the prosecution, the underwriter discovered this problem and conducted in-depth investigations, and finally restored the truth of the case and made a decision not to prosecute. The case of
shows that although "confrontational" interrogation can improve the investigation efficiency to a certain extent, the improvement of efficiency does not mean that it is closer to the truth of the case. Instead, it will hinder the emergence of the truth, and ultimately lead to innocent people being wronged. . When a procedure not only fails to help discover the facts, it will also cause innocent people to suffer injustice, this procedure loses the basis of legitimacy.
4. Reflection on the "qualitative" interrogation method
The emergence of "qualitative" interrogation method is not accidental. It is just a manifestation of irregular law enforcement by the public security organs. Some procuratorial organs found in handling cases that the public security organs still had problems such as failure to inform the criminal suspects of litigation rights in accordance with the law, irregular production of interrogation records, and failure to strictly verify the identity information of the criminal suspects.
These problems seem trivial. But the problems reflected behind are many aspects: , first, the investigators lack awareness of human rights protection; , second, the program's legal awareness still needs to be improved; third, the investigation supervision procedures need to be improved.
In order to solve the above problems, we need to start from the following aspects:
➤First, we must increase personnel training and update the concept of human rights protection. Facts show that the presumption of guilty case handling thinking increases the risk of wrongful judgment, and the occurrence of wrongful cases contaminates the source of justice and shakes the foundation of justice. In the severe situation where there are many cases and few people, public security organs should strengthen personnel training, update law enforcement concepts, strictly control the quality of evidence, and prevent innocent people from being wronged.
➤Secondly, we must strengthen the cooperation between prosecutors and police, and review and guide investigation. Strengthening the cooperation between prosecutors and police is an inevitable requirement for realizing the reform of the "trial-centered" litigation system. Strengthening the cooperation between prosecutors and police is in line with criminal justice laws. The specific cooperation method is reflected in the review and guidance of investigation - the public prosecution agency guides the investigation direction, investigation procedures, investigation methods and other contents of the case by intervening in case investigation in advance, so as to improve the quality and effectiveness of investigation work.
➤Finally, we must give full play to the legal supervision function of the procuratorate, strengthen the supervision of the investigation procedures, and ensure that case investigation and handling are always carried out within the track of the law. The Beijing Municipal Procuratorate has innovated the supervision mechanism and dispatched the procuratorate office at the Law Enforcement and Case Management Center of the Public Security Organs to conduct supervision from the start of criminal case filing, making up for the "golden 24-hour" supervision gap in the investigation stage, broadening the clue channels for investigation and supervision, and effectively ensuring the quality of the case investigation and handling.
