Recently, the Supreme People's Court ("SPC") and the Ministry of Justice ("MOJ") have jointly issued the Measures on Initiating the Pilot Program of Enabling Lawyers to be Engaged in the Full Process of Defense in Criminal Cases (the "Measures") which will be put into trial implementation for one year from the issue date.
According to the Measures, the program of letting lawyers participate in the defense all the way through the trial stage in criminal cases will be piloted in Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces (municipalities directly under the Central Government). The Measures extend the scope of notification of providing defense to include all first-instance and second-instance cases heard under general procedures and cases tried under trial supervision procedures at the court stage, and also provide that if a people's court of second instance finds the people's court of first instance has not fulfilled its duty of notifying the defendant of defense, which leads to the result that the defendant has no access to the defense offered by a lawyer during the trial period, it should make a decision to reverse the original judgement and send the case back to the people's court previously responsible for its trial to rehear it. Furthermore, the Measures stress the need to safeguard lawyers' rights to know, consult case files, carry out investigations and obtain evidence, and apply for letting witnesses appear in court and give testimony, and prohibit any restrictions over the times and the length of time defense lawyers request to consult the case files.