法院庭审观摩报告

Court Observation Report

This semester I went to the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court to have a look at the procedure of trial.

I went there Saturday on December 20, 2014, which was exactly the “judgment day”of all the courts in Guangzhou—judges will only recite their judgment of the former cases instead of hearing new cases.

I chose to observe a criminal case—crime of smuggling precious and rare species of wildlife as well as the products thereof. The court should have begun at 9:30 at Court 2 on the fourth floor but there was some kind of delay because the suspects need to be examined very carefully until they made it to the courtroom so that they cannot escape. The trial started at around 10:15. The suspects were brought into the courtroom from an entrance different from our auditors’. Likewise, the judge and the clerk of court also enter the room from different entries as our auditors did. I suppose that aims to prevent any contact among the suspects, auditors and judges to avoid any influence and interference on the judges’decisions, which will directly affect the results of the trial. Before the trial, the clerk of court was busy checking the document of the cases and he also asked the attorneys to show their licenses.

During the trial, the judge sat in the middle of the courtroom and there were no jurors. Only one clerk of court was present and he seated himself lower than the judge, which indicated the hierarchical structures of the court. At this case, the prosecutor did not show up while there were as many as five attorneys for the defense sat against the seat of the prosecutors. The suspects were put in middle of the court between the prosecutor and the defense attorneys, their positions much lower than the judge. In contrast, the arrangement of seats in civil courts is reported very different from that in criminal ones. In civil court, there are no suspect seats and the plaintiff and the defendant are parallel to each other, facing the judge. As to the number of the lawyers, it is said that each suspect can hire two lawyers and it happened that only one lawyer of each suspect took part in the trial that day. During the judge’s recitation of his judgment, he skipped the cause of action mentioned on the indictment before and

announced his opinion directly. His opinion included his references of law, such as the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, and legal liability of the criminals. Some of the principal criminals were sentenced to a 7-year imprisonment with a fine of 50,000 RMB whilst some accomplices were given a lighter or mitigated punishment, 2-year imprisonment with a 3-year suspension of sentence and a fine of 10,000 RMB. After announcing the judgment, the judge asked the detainees whether they were satisfied with the judgment and told them if they were not satisfied they could appeal to the Higher People’s Court within 10 days. Most of the detainees preferred to make the decisions after talking to their lawyers. At last, the judge left the courtroom in a hurry. Judging from the whole trial process, both the judge and the suspects left a quite strange impression on me. The judge seemed to pay no attention on the trial. Meanwhile, the suspects looked quite happy and excited from the very beginning of the trial probably because they wanted to figure out whether their family came to join the trial.

That’s what I see and think about the trial in the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court. Thank you for your dedicated reading!

References:

1.https://www.360docs.net/doc/e18411334.html,/view/29246bc3aa00b52acfc7caf5.html?

pn=50

2.《牛津法律大辞典》/（英）沃克著；李双元等译.—北京：法

律出版社，2003.4