영국의 면책조건부 증언취득제도

The immunity system in English common law was known as turning Queen's Evidence. The common law permitted law enforcement agencies to grant immunity from prosecution or restricted use undertakings upon an accomplice who gave evidence against his co-accused for the Crown. Also the Courts sentenced discounts for an accomplice in exchange for testifying against his associates in common law. The section 190(4) of the Enterprise Act 2002 introduced the first full immunity provision in statute in return for substantial cooperation in the cartel offence. The Secretary of State for the Home Department in its White Paper “One Step Ahead” published March 2004 argued that Queen's Evidence will need to be strengthened and used more widely by enshrining antecedent common law‘s immunity provisions in statute, and introducing a system of binding cooperation agreements between the prosecution and an offender who assist the investigation and/or prosecution of his associates in order to defeat organised crime. As a result, the Section 71 to 75 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act(SOCPA) 2005 established new powers granting full immunity, restricted use undertakings, reduction in sentence and review of sentence to an assisting offender who committed a crime excepting the cartel offense. According to the White Paper, SOCPA, Case law, CPS guidance and so on, it is essential that the prosecution, rather than the investigation agency, has the sole right to make a SOCPA agreement in order to prevent investigator's malpractice and corruption, and exercise the independent discretion of the prosecution. The Prosecutor can specify conditions in a SOCPA agreement with an assisting offender in contrast to common law's Queen's Evidence. If an assisting offender fails to comply with any conditions specified in a SOCPA agreement, the immunity can cease to have effect and be revoked for breach of its conditions. An assisting offender who wishes to benefit from a SOCPA agreement must (a) fully admit whole of his previous criminal activities in de-briefing or cleansing process, (b) provide the investigators with all information available to him regarding matters under investigation and those involved (c) agree to maintain continuous and complete cooperation throughout the investigation and until the conclusion of any criminal or other proceedings, including testifying as a witness truthfully in court where appropriate. The majority of assisting offenders would be offered sentence reduction rather than full immunity or restricted use undertakings. However the immunity power hasn't been used to a great degree since SOCPA came into force. The use of an assisting offender's evidence has long been considered a possible source of miscarriage of justice because he may give unreliable evidence. Centuries age, Juries were very suspicious of this type of witness and that acquittal rate was accordingly very high. It seems the same issues apply today. An assisting offender and families need to be guarded by police against violent acts of retribution, but it is problem that the cost to care them is very expensive. Where immunity system will be introduced into our criminal justice system, it is necessary to establish substantial protections against abuse, unreliability and malpractice brought by secret deals.