Clarify drunken driving
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Vice-President of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) Zhang Jun's recent remarks that not all drunken driving cases should be considered criminal offenses have caused widespread concern that this may lead to confusion in enforcement of the newly amended Criminal Law.
At a national workshop on trials of criminal cases held in Chongqing on Tuesday, Zhang told court representatives across the nation to handle drunken driving cases prudently and to avoid non-discriminatory categorization of cases as criminal offenses.
He said conviction should not be based solely on whether the incident met the criteria for drunken driving and that not all drunken driving should be considered a crime, especially if no "serious consequences" resulted.
But according to the newly amended Criminal Law, which was approved in late February by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), the top legislature, all drunken driving incidents should be considered criminal offenses, regardless of the severity of the consequences.
The revised law is a positive response made by the top legislature to the public's ever-growing concerns about the increasing number of deadly traffic accidents caused by speeding and drunken driving.
As a country whose vehicle ownership has risen at an explosive rate in recent years and whose number of fatal traffic accidents have long ranked it the world's No 1, Chinese people have good reasons to demand their country adopt stricter legal measures to promote civilized and safer driving.
As a SPC vice-president, Zhang's remarks about differential criminal punishments for drunken driving are surely a subject worthy of more discussion, especially among legal experts.
However, his words have definitely sparked public suspicions that differential treatment may leave room for some law enforcers to apply their own subjective and even wanton interpretations of the law when they seize the suspects or decide to mete out sentences to drunken drivers.
Under these circumstances, people have reasons to believe that there is possibility that some "privileged" persons will be able to make use of the confusion to avoid criminal punishments even if caught drunken driving.
To maintain the seriousness and authority of the newly amended Criminal Law, the SPC should better make clarifications on the drunken driving issue to reduce or avoid unnecessary confusion and administrative interventions into our judicial procedures.
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