Doing innocence defense and sentencing defense at the same time [court trial stage]

Whether the innocence defense and sentencing defense opinions can be issued at the same time has always been a topic of endless debate in the practical community. Some people believe that the two defense logics are essentially contradictory, one is the opinion of innocence and the other is the opinion of guilt, so they cannot be expressed at the same time. Based on such a consideration of logical self-consistency, in many past court trials, judges who held this view did not allow lawyers who defended innocence to express sentencing opinions.

But one fact that cannot be ignored is that the acquittal verdict rate of our country's courts has been extremely low for many years, and the proportion of cases in which lawyers defend themselves is much higher than the proportion of cases in which they are actually acquitted. And in different cases, lawyers may have many reasons for defending innocence, some of which are factual defenses of innocence, and some of which are based on legal characterization when there is little factual dispute. But whether it is a factual innocence defense or a legal innocence defense, the same problem exists. Due to different positions resulting from different litigation statuses, inevitably different understandings of some laws, and the long-standing habitual thinking mode of the three organs of public security, prosecution and law, it is often difficult for the opinions of defense lawyers, especially the innocence defense opinions, to be adopted. . In fact, many lawyers adopt the condition of not guilty plea, and there are also many sentencing circumstances.

In practice, according to the "Guiding Opinions on Sentencing of the People's Courts (Trial)" and the "Regulations on Legally Protecting Lawyers' Rights to Practice", there is currently a judicial basis for lawyers to be able to defend sentencing while defending innocence. Of course, defense lawyers must also be cautious when choosing an innocence defense strategy. They must express an innocence opinion when there is indeed a factual and legal basis, and do not disregard whether the reasons for innocence defense are sufficient just because of relevant regulations. , conducting a large number of segmented defenses will reduce the professionalism and persuasiveness of criminal defense lawyers, which is not conducive to safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of the defendant.