China's top prosecutor has further specified the circumstances in which the police can place a suspect into conditional arrest if there is no firm evidence of the suspect's guilt.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) issued a statement detailing the circumstances and the length of time suspects may be held in detention before being formally arrested under suspicion of having committed a crime.
Such arrests can be done on condition that the suspect is involved in a major case and will be sentenced to over 10 years if convicted or when the suspect is involved in a case that severely hurts national or public security, such as murder, kidnapping, raping and smuggling drugs, the Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.
Normally, prosecutors can authorize police to arrest a suspect only when they possess enough evidence to convict, according to Hong Daode, a criminal procedure law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.
The "conditional arrest system," introduced by the SPP in 2005 and which took effect the following year, allows police to arrest a suspect when the prosecutors hold enough evidence to have strong suspicions that someone committed a crime, but not quite enough evidence to convict that person in court.
"The system aims to prevent the suspect from fleeing, destroying evidence or bribing the authorities before prosecutors authorize the police to arrest a suspect," said Chen Yongsheng, a criminal procedure law professor at Peking University.
After the suspect is put under conditional arrest, the investigators are given a period of time, usually two weeks, a month or two months, to collect evidence in order to prove the suspect's guilt, Chen told the Global Times.
The SPP also said that if investigators fail to gather enough evidence within two months, they need to report the case to the head prosecutor or the prosecutors committee, who will discuss the release of the suspect, Xinhua reported.
"This allows the mistakenly arrested to retain the freedom that he deserves, and gives him a better chance to convince people around him that he's in fact innocent," Chen said.
Although the system has good intentions, many local prosecutors and police misused the conditional arrest system to simplify their work, Hong said.
"The police sometimes use the system as an excuse to arrest suspects with little evidence and force them to confess, just to make the investigative process easier," Hong said, adding that SPP's statement will be able to reduce such instances.
Chen and Hong agreed the SPP statement will make the conditional arrest system more effective, but said they do not support the system as a whole.
"If an innocent person is arrested, he must find evidence to prove he's not guilty, which is often difficult to do. This results in mistaken convictions and is inhumane," Chen noted.
Hong echoed Chen, adding that "arresting a person without sufficient supporting evidence is unfair and violates one's human rights."
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