| Subject to the procedural epistemology of pursuing the objective truth, China’s criminal standard of proof has not gotten rid of the label of objectivization. How to govern judges’ judicial belief of facts has been a difficult issue in the criminal judicature on both practical and theoretical levels. When the Article 140 in China’s Judicial Interpretations on China’s Criminal Procedure Law issued by the People’s Supreme Court amended in 2021 is applied practically, evidentiary requirements are confounded with judicial belief in fact-findings, showing that it has been drifting away from the statutes regulating the standard of proof. In the circumstance that evidentiary requirements are improperly restrained by the high standard of convictions, courts are more inclined to lower the evidentiary requirements and to construct the chain of evidence surrounding the mainline of formal narratives. However, to avoid the risk brought with subjective judgments and also the systemic responsibilities, courts tend to convict with factual belief on the objective proof, and yet without proper restrictions, the so-called factual presumptions might be abused. To adjust the deviations and to tackle with the subjectivity issue, this paper promotes a two-step approach, that is, evidentiary factors’ review comes first and convictions with judicial belief come forward. In addition, to govern the free belief when evaluating the standard of beyond all reasonable doubts, the fact-finder is legally obliged to justify the facts that he/she is convinced. |
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