Proper Investigation for Criminal Cases to Protect Rights of Alleged Offenders or Accused Persons in a Justice Process

Abstract

Separating an investigation authority and providing this to be a sole responsibility of inquiry officers without being intervened from prosecutors from the beginning of the process has allowed inquiry officers to potentially misuse their authority in conducting an investigation, which in turn, may affect the rights of the accused persons in the justice process. The objectives of this research were to: 1. study current state of an investigation and a criminal prosecution; 2. problems and obstacles of determining a measure to combine an investigation and a criminal prosecution to be one process; and 3. propose a proper approach for combining an investigation and a criminal prosecution into one process so that the rights of the alleged offenders or accused persons could be protected during the justice process. This research employed a qualitative research approach. Key informants consisted of 10 inquiry officers who had at least 3 years of experiences in conducting investigations, and 10 prosecutors who had at least 5 years of experiences in prosecuting cases, making a total of 20 respondents. They were selected by purposive sampling. Data were collected by conducting in-depth interviews and analyzed with content analysis. Research findings revealed that: 1. an investigation process and a criminal prosecution process had a problem arising from the result of wrongful performance of inquiry officers and prosecutors where prosecutors proceeded with a criminal case which was inaccurately based on the misguided opinion of inquiry officers, leading to a mistake in making a prosecutor order or in conducting a criminal procedure; 2. Problems and obstacles in this investigation revolved around how personnel in related organizations wanted to cling to power: a law separating the authorities and the responsibilities of related organizations; and how related organizations refused to be responsible for tasks in their purview; and 3. a proper approach to combine an investigation and a criminal prosecution into a single process was to merge these two processes together and provide prosecutors with an authority to seek and obtain witnesses and evidence for cases that accused persons might receive more than ten years of punishment whereas cases that had ten years or less than ten years of punishment and did not involve complicated problems, prosecutors might do these tasks by themselves or assigned inquiry officers to do so. These research findings provide guidelines and suggestions for related organizations in providing protection for alleged offenders from those that may abuse their investigative power. Moreover, they also efficiently help in a process of obtaining proof of truth while protecting rights of alleged offenders in the justice process.