China, where dramatic miscarriages of justice have made recent headlines, is launching a pilot project allowing the interrogation of criminal suspects in front of video cameras and lawyers, state media said on Monday. Three county-level public security bureaux in Beijing and in the provinces of Gansu and Henan had been chosen for the experiment which started this month, the Legal Daily newspaper said. "Suspects will be entitled to choose from three options before the interrogation begins - the interrogation to be videotaped, recorded or to be in the presence of an assigned lawyer," it said.
Current criminal law only has brief provisions for interrogations, requiring merely that the police seek the "consent and signature" of suspects on interrogation transcripts.
Suspects have to answer all questions except "those irrelevant to the case" and lawyers are not available until after the first round of questioning. Last week, Henan police issued "yellow card" warnings to eight local public security bureaux for their poor performance in solving homicides, the province's Dahe newspaper reported on Monday.
Pressure from superiors and the public alike prompts police to make regular vows to "solve all homicide cases", which often means cursory investigations and prosecutions at almost any cost.
Last month the superior court of western Sichuan province became the first in China to say it would not recognise evidence obtained by torture or threats of violence.
The decision came amid widespread coverage of the case of She Xianglin, who said he had been tortured into admitting to murdering his wife.
Comments
Comments are closed.