The Chinese criminal retrial mechanism has been established since the enactment of Chinese Criminal Procedural Law in 1979, and its basic structure and “seeking truth from fact and correction whenever errors found” as the fundamental principle laying the foundation for retrial mechanism have never changed. However, both the criminal practice and theoretical research have changed dramatically since its establishment. During the twenty years from the beginning of 1980s to the end of 1990s, the academic circle usually interpreted the retrial provisions positively. But since the Chinese government signed or ratified a number of important international conventions for human rights protection from 1998, the academic circle has realized and recognized the principle of double jeopardy, and suggested to learn the retrial mechanism from western countries. Nonetheless, the principle of double jeopardy contradicts with the idea of “seeking truth from fact and correction whenever errors found”, therefore introducing double jeopardy into Chinese criminal procedural system will confront many complicated and tough problems. Those previous academic research outputs could not accomplish the task to reconstruct the Chinese criminal retrial mechanism based on double jeopardy, therefore research transition is necessary.As to the transition of criminal procedural law research, the first thing is to set the direction, which means complying to the development laws of criminal procedure, and asserting those “indispensable principles” as well as rebutting wrong views in order to avoid retrogression. And on this basis, it is necessary to confront the complicated situations when introducing double jeopardy into Chinese law. In the context of emphasizing the importance of “seeking truth from fact and correction whenever errors found” in the legislative and judicial circle, it is not only necessary to demonstrate the greater legitimacy of double jeopardy in criminal retrial mechanism, but also necessary to smoothen the resistant force so as to improve the Chinese criminal retrial mechanism gradually. |