Back from the Dead

Back from the Dead PDF Author: He Jiahong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856619
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
China's party-run courts have one of the highest conviction rates in the world, with forced confessions remaining a central feature. Despite recent prohibitions on evidence obtained through coercion or torture, forced confessions continue to undermine the Chinese judicial system. Recounting some harrowing cases of wrongful conviction, acclaimed legal scholar and novelist He Jiahong analyzes many problems in China's justice system. In one such case, Teng Xingshan was convicted in 1988 and later executed for murdering his mistress, but almost six years later it was discovered that the supposed victim, Shi Xiaorong, was still alive. In 2005, Teng's children submitted a complaint to the Hunan High People's Court, which then issued a revised judgment. In another case, She Xianglin was convicted of murdering his wife in 1994 and was sentenced to death, but this sentence was later commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment. In 2005, She's wife, presumed dead for over eleven years, "returned to life"; She was released from prison two weeks later, retried and found not guilty. With riveting examples, the author surveys the organization and procedure of criminal investigation, the lawyering system for criminal defense, the public prosecution system, trial proceedings, as well as criminal punishments and appeals. In doing so, He highlights the frequent causes of wrongful convictions: investigators working from forced confessions to evidence; improperly tight deadlines for solving criminal cases; prejudicial collection of evidence; misinterpretation of scientific evidence; continued use of torture to extract confessions; bowing to public opinion; nominal checks among the police, prosecutors and the courts; the dysfunction of courtroom trials; unlawfully extended custody with tunnel vision; and reduced sentencing in cases of doubt. The author also provides updated information about recent changes and reforms as well as the many continuing challenges of the criminal justice system in China.

Back from the Dead

Back from the Dead PDF Author: He Jiahong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856619
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book Here

Book Description
China's party-run courts have one of the highest conviction rates in the world, with forced confessions remaining a central feature. Despite recent prohibitions on evidence obtained through coercion or torture, forced confessions continue to undermine the Chinese judicial system. Recounting some harrowing cases of wrongful conviction, acclaimed legal scholar and novelist He Jiahong analyzes many problems in China's justice system. In one such case, Teng Xingshan was convicted in 1988 and later executed for murdering his mistress, but almost six years later it was discovered that the supposed victim, Shi Xiaorong, was still alive. In 2005, Teng's children submitted a complaint to the Hunan High People's Court, which then issued a revised judgment. In another case, She Xianglin was convicted of murdering his wife in 1994 and was sentenced to death, but this sentence was later commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment. In 2005, She's wife, presumed dead for over eleven years, "returned to life"; She was released from prison two weeks later, retried and found not guilty. With riveting examples, the author surveys the organization and procedure of criminal investigation, the lawyering system for criminal defense, the public prosecution system, trial proceedings, as well as criminal punishments and appeals. In doing so, He highlights the frequent causes of wrongful convictions: investigators working from forced confessions to evidence; improperly tight deadlines for solving criminal cases; prejudicial collection of evidence; misinterpretation of scientific evidence; continued use of torture to extract confessions; bowing to public opinion; nominal checks among the police, prosecutors and the courts; the dysfunction of courtroom trials; unlawfully extended custody with tunnel vision; and reduced sentencing in cases of doubt. The author also provides updated information about recent changes and reforms as well as the many continuing challenges of the criminal justice system in China.

Wrongful Convictions in China

Wrongful Convictions in China PDF Author: Na Jiang
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 366246084X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
The primary focus of this comparative and empirical work is to address wrongful convictions between China and common-law countries in order to promote a better understanding of wrongful convictions in China’s practice with the help of comparative analyses, verifiable and empirical data and case studies. It examines the scope of wrongful convictions and offers new insights into the worldwide movement to prevent them, assesses how far it has progressed and what reforms are most needed. The book suggests that adversarial and inquisitorial systems alike could benefit from this research and learn valuable lessons from one another on how to effectively reduce the risk of wrongful convictions.

Do Exclusionary Rules Ensure a Fair Trial?

Do Exclusionary Rules Ensure a Fair Trial? PDF Author: Sabine Gless
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030125203
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
This open access publication discusses exclusionary rules in different criminal justice systems. It is based on the findings of a research project in comparative law with a focus on the question of whether or not a fair trial can be secured through evidence exclusion. Part I explains the legal framework in which exclusionary rules function in six legal systems: Germany, Switzerland, People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States. Part II is dedicated to selected issues identified as crucial for the assessment of exclusionary rules. These chapters highlight the delicate balance of interests required in the exclusion of potentially relevant information from a criminal trial and discusses possible approaches to alleviate the legal hurdles involved.

Justice

Justice PDF Author: Flora Sapio
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108121322
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Claims about a pursuit of justice weave through all periods of China's modern history. But what do authorities mean when they refer to 'justice' and do Chinese citizens interpret justice in the same way as their leaders? This book explores how certain ideas about justice have come to be dominant in Chinese polity and society, and how some conceptions of justice have been rendered more powerful and legitimate than others. This book's focus on 'how' justice works incorporates a concern about the processes that lead to the making, un-making and re-making of distinct conceptions of justice. Investigating the processes and frameworks through which certain ideas about justice have come to the political and social forefront in China today, this innovative work explains how these ideas are articulated through spoken performances and written expression by both the party-state and its citizenry.

Convicting the Innocent

Convicting the Innocent PDF Author: Brandon L. Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060989
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man. DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing. Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory. Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

The Construction of Guilt in China

The Construction of Guilt in China PDF Author: Yu Mou
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509913041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Drawing on insights from the author's own empirical data obtained from systematic observation of the daily routines within Chinese criminal justice institutions, this ground-breaking book examines the functional deficiency of the criminal justice system in preventing innocent individuals from being wrongly accused and convicted. Set within a broad socio-legal context, it outlines the strategic interrelationships between key legal actors, the deep-seated legal culture embedded in practice, the deficiency of integrity of the system and the structural injustices that follow. The author traces criminal case files in the criminal process – how they are constructed, scrutinised and used to dispose of cases and convict defendants in lieu of witnesses' oral testimony. This book illustrates that the Chinese criminal justice system as a state apparatus of social control has been framed through performance indicators, bureaucratic management and the central value of collectivism in such a way as to maintain the stability of the authoritarian power. The Construction of Guilt in China will appeal to academics, researchers, policy advisers and practitioners working in the areas of criminal law, comparative criminal justice, criminology and Chinese studies. Winner of the 2020 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.

Harsh Justice

Harsh Justice PDF Author: James Q. Whitman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198035314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Criminal punishment in America is harsh and degrading--more so than anywhere else in the liberal west. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? In this novel work of comparative legal history, James Whitman argues that the answer lies in America's triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.

Drawn to Injustice

Drawn to Injustice PDF Author: Timothy Masters
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101585129
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Timothy Masters was a lonely, troubled teenager with a penchant for gory artwork when he first saw Peggy Lee Hettrick… …her dead, mutilated body nearly frozen in the early morning of Fort Collins, Colorado. Not believing it could really be a dead body, thinking he was the victim of yet another prank by his abusive classmates, the fifteen-year-old didn’t go to the police—but they came to him. So began a decade-long investigation led by a relentless detective who was sure that Masters was the killer, even without a shred of physical evidence. Against all reason, a conspiracy of silence and circumstantial evidence eventually put Masters behind bars. Only the determination of a lone investigator who believed the young man was innocent would reveal the shocking truth, and free Masters after ten years in prison. This is the compelling true story of one life ended in blood and murder, one life ruined by coincidence and prejudice, and justice long denied but finally found.

Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases

Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases PDF Author: Hugo Adam Bedau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Capital punishment
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description


Miscarriages of Justice

Miscarriages of Justice PDF Author: Bibi Sangha
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780409340723
Category : Criminal investigation
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This work presents an unprecedented and scholarly critique of the post-appeal review phase of the Australian criminal justice system. It offers a unique insight for students and practitioners into a new and developing area of criminal law. The authors identify a fundamental flaw that lies at the heart of the Australian criminal justice system: an inconsistency between what constitutes a miscarriage of justice under substantive law against what constitutes a miscarriage of justice under procedural law. By examining the problematic nature of the criminal appeal rights in Australia, Sangha and Moles argue that the existing system does not comply with the rule of law provisions or AustraliaoÂeÂ(tm)s international human rights obligations. South Australia has introduced a new statutory right of appeal and Tasmaina is considering doing the same, to address this issue which represents the first substantive change to the criminal appeal rights in Australia in 100 years. Miscarriages of Justice: Criminal Appeals and the Rule of Law in Australia explains the operation of this legislation and advances a compelling argument for its nationwide adoption. This is achieved through an examination of a number of Australian (and international) wrongful conviction cases as well as discussion of specific legal issues and the problematic area of compensation for wrongful convictions. Features oÂeo Authoritative analysis oÂeo Examines leading Australian cases oÂeo Unique text on a new and developing area of law Related Titles D Chappell & P Wilson, Issues in Australian Crime and Criminal Justice, 2005