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IMPACT OF CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION 582 ON CRIMINAL EVIDENCE
It has long been the practice of the judiciary to hold that self-incriminating statements by a joint defendant can be admitted in evidence in deter-mining the guilt of other joint defendants (major precedents include Supreme Court judgments from 1942 and 1957). However, Constitutional Interpretation 582, issued by the Council of Grand Justices on 23 July 2004, overturns this view. Based on the right to litigate (including the right to present a full defense in criminal pro-ceedings) as guaranteed by Article 16 of the Constitution, and the due process as specified in Article 8 Paragraph 1 of the Constitution, the Grand Justices held that in the 1942 judgment, the court's acceptance of self-incriminating statements of one joint defendant as direct evi-dence of the guilt of other joint defendants, without giving the other defendants an opportu-nity to examine the defendant concerned as a witness, had deprived the other defendants' right to cross-examine the witness in conflict with Article 273 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as then in force. Therefore the above precedents, and other precedents adopting the same view, should no longer be relied upon.
However, the Supreme Court takes the view that confession of joint defendants who are joint perpetrators and those of joint defendants who are not joint perpetrators should be evaluated differently, and that not all such confessions should be regarded as inadmissible.
In view of the above difference of opinion, it remains to be seen what impact the Grand Jus-tices' interpretation will have on future criminal procedure, and how the use of joint defendants as witnesses will be handled in practice.