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Coercion to plead guilty and the role of the prosecutor in the people's Republic of China : an empirical account
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Mou, Yu (2013) Coercion to plead guilty and the role of the prosecutor in the people's Republic of China : an empirical account. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick. Warwick School of Law Research Paper (Number 2013/12).
An open access version can be found in:
Official URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2286720
Abstract
The guilty plea process in China is inherently coercive and fraught with oppression and manipulation. Drawing upon my empirical research, this article examines how the guilty plea procedure has been facilitated in the socio-political context of China and the role of the prosecutor within that. Driven by crime-control values and the allied relationship with the police, the prosecutor strives officiously to pursue the conviction of the accused, rather than being an impartial supervisor of the investigation. In the absence of legal advisers or any effective safeguards to protect the suspect during the vulnerable and crucial process of prosecutorial interrogation, overbearing tactics were used and statements were falsified, by the prosecutor, to obtain the guilty plea that secures conviction. Lacking any voluntary elements in the alternative procedural arrangement, the Chinese guilty plea procedure embodies the innermost feature within the Chinese criminal justice system – the urgency to punish.
Item Type: | Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper) | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Series Name: | Warwick School of Law Research Paper | ||||
Publisher: | University of Warwick | ||||
Place of Publication: | Coventry | ||||
Official Date: | 28 June 2013 | ||||
Dates: |
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Number: | Number 2013/12 | ||||
Number of Pages: | 21 | ||||
Status: | Not Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||
Open Access Version: |
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