Let's give an example of fighting. If you hurt someone slightly, you have to bear the medical expenses caused by the other person's injury, which is a civil liability. This kind of responsibility, you can communicate privately and sign a settlement agreement; But because minor injuries have constituted the threshold of intentional injury, that is, you have been suspected of intentional injury, then at this time, it is not understood by the other party that you can be exempted from criminal responsibility. Public security will usually file a criminal case against you. The so-called criminal responsibility, similar to the nature of administrative responsibility, belongs to the category of state public power organs. Individual citizens have no right to exempt each other from administrative or civil liability through private understanding and reconciliation.
In this example, if you slightly hurt the other party, it does not constitute minor injuries, then according to the usual practice in practice, the public security will let you settle privately at this time, and if an agreement can be reached on civil compensation, the public security will not detain you; But as long as the other party doesn't understand and insists on detaining you, you can't escape the responsibility. This responsibility is the punishment of public security management, which is also the administrative responsibility.
Therefore, whether the letter of understanding can exempt the other party from responsibility depends on the nature of the case. If only civil liability is involved, the compensation agreement or understanding agreement reached by citizens in private is ok. However, once the administrative responsibility or criminal responsibility of public power is involved, the letter of understanding can at most be given a lighter punishment without constituting an exemption factor. I hope everyone will not misunderstand this.
In fact, we often see all kinds of legal news events in our lives, such as intentional homicide cases or human trafficking cases. In such criminal cases, the defendant often tries to win the understanding of the victim, in the hope that the court will eventually punish him lightly, rather than completely exempting him from criminal responsibility.
How much criminal responsibility can be reduced after understanding? This also depends on the specific situation. If it is extreme homicide, sometimes even with understanding, the death penalty is inevitable. However, for ordinary criminal cases, if there is a criminal awareness, the punishment will be much lighter, which is often transformed into a decisive factor in the application of probation in practice.