Judgment by the court of evidence in criminal proceedings: an empirical analysis
The implementation of the appointment of criminal proceedings, regulated by the Art. 6 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, presupposes cognitive as well as formal and logical activities of the official conducting criminal proceedings, which includes the collection, verification and evaluation of evidence. The evaluation stage of legal cognition causes fierce discussions among the scientists-processivists both in view of the complexity of determination of its essence and due to the lack of a constant regulation of the criteria for assessing evidence that directly influences the decision of the verdict and is not only legal but also political. The research conducted within the framework of the scientific article allows us to state that the evaluation of evidence in its content is a unity of the thinking and legal components. The thinking component (the inner side) consists in analytical activity subordinated to logical laws and aimed at determining the presence or absence of such properties of evidence as relevance and admissibility. The procedural and legal component (external side) characterizes the legal form of the relevant activity, the result of which is an interim or final decision on the criminal case. Based on the analysis of law enforcement practice the author comes to the conclusion that the greatest difficulty in the activities of the court is the application of the provisions of the criminal procedure law that establish a list of inadmissible evidence, both because of internal contradictions and because of the excess of the most-favored-nation rule to the defense side. In connection with this it is proposed to insert in Art. 75 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, the amendments and supplements that presuppose the establishment of a criterion of the essentiality (ineradicability) of a violation of the criminal procedural law when the evidence is inadmissible. At the same time in the author’s opinion those that entail the deprivation or restriction of the constitutional rights and freedoms of participants in the criminal process or in some other way affect the reliability of the evidence obtained can be attributed to irreparable (material) violations of the criminal procedure law.
Keywords: litigation; violation of the criminal procedure law; the admissibility of the proof; court; criminal procedural form; judicial decision; relevance; reliability; adequacy
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