Compared with the original edition of Law Publishing House, the new edition of Misjudged Cases has undergone a brand-new makeover, with a gray cover and a frosted waist seal, which is elegant and luxurious. Professor Jiang Ping, Professor Chen Guangzhong and Professor Zhang Jianwei's recommendation of this book is more like borrowing the name of Misjudged Cases to warn the world, and it is also a good guide for our lawyers: reading this book will not only get words, but also get ideas that can be used all the time. Shen Jiaben, a jurist in the late Qing Dynasty, once assisted westerners in the draft of the specific provisions of the criminal law, saying: the criminal law is not good, which harms good people; If the criminal procedure law is not prepared, even the best citizens will suffer. More than half a century later, florio, a legal person, wrote in Preface to Misjudged Cases: "Please don't think that a good father and a good citizen will never deal with local judges. In fact, even the most honest and respected people may become victims of the judicial department. " Starting from the legal system, Shen Jiaben explained the importance of the criminal procedure law in regulating and restricting the public power of the state and protecting individual rights, so as to protect the innocent from harm. Florio, from his rich practical experience, sincerely and even reluctantly sends a kind reminder to you and me. They all mentioned that anyone can be a victim of criminal justice. Several cases seized by Mr. florio are all misjudged cases, but each has its own causes: the investigation organ and the accusation organ arbitrarily exercise their functions and powers, such as extorting confessions by torture; The defendant himself provided false information; The witness wrongly identifies or provides false testimony; The appraiser's mistakes in the appraisal and so on. In his book, Mr. florio also lists the subjects who are most likely to cheat the court-defendants, witnesses, expert witnesses and so on. From a deeper analysis, these reasons are attributed to "human" mistakes. These human errors are sometimes unintentional, such as the inaccurate memory of witnesses and the wrong opinions of appraisers due to the pollution of appraisal materials or the limitation of science and technology. However, these wrong or insufficient evidence materials have reached logical conclusions for various reasons and have never been "suspected" by reasonable doubts. So can it be said that the judgment of the trial subject (jury, juror or judge) is fair? As florio said, releasing a criminal or letting a real criminal get away with it will certainly make them feel uneasy, but a judge can't take the heaviest one as a conclusion when weighing strong evidence and suspicious evidence. When in doubt, it should lead to acquittal, which is also the basic requirement of natural justice. On closer inspection, I think this book is not written by a French jurist with a case in French legal practice as the background, as if the author is analyzing a misjudged case in China. But the blue cover of the original French reminds me that this is a wrong case in French. Yes, the reasons for misjudged cases are so similar. Lev tolstoy once said, "Happy families are all similar, but unhappy families are different". This argument is slightly different in the legal context: there may not be a global justice that meets the unified standards, but injustice and people's perception of injustice are strikingly similar. Maybe you remember these names. Du, She Xianglin, Xu Jingxiang and so on. Behind these names are misjudged cases. There are too many inevitability in the occurrence of these misjudged cases: blindly following the so-called scientific evidence (such as polygraph). ), witnesses misrecognize, investigators illegally collect evidence ... and the disclosure of these misjudged cases is too accidental, often the real murderer is arrested and confessed or the "dead" miraculously returns. I dare not imagine, if the real murderer does not appear or the "dead" does not "resurrect", can this misjudged case still be discovered? Will even belated justice be realized? After reading the wrong case, I can't help but sigh that the wrong case is one of the crux of criminal justice in various countries, regardless of East and West, Anglo-American legal system, continental legal system, adversary system and authority system. Just like the pursuit of justice by all mankind, people also hope that the less unjust prisons occur, the more unjust prisons are corrected, the more unjust prisoners are compensated, and the more justice is realized. Remember, criminal justice has a more important purpose than seeking the truth, so that guilty people can be convicted and punished accordingly-to ensure that innocent people will not be convicted and punished. The criminal procedure itself should not be used as a means of punishment for the defendant, and the criminal justice system should not only be a tool used by the state to convict and sentence criminals, nor should it only take the defendant as the object of evaluation. In addition, the criminal justice system also evaluates the actions of investigation organs, procuratorial organs and even trial parties involved in criminal proceedings, and the actions evaluated as unfair should ensure full and effective relief. In this way, the results of criminal justice operation can be accepted, convincing and reducing criminal misjudged cases. (The author is a doctoral student at Tsinghua University Law School)