Институт дачи клятвы (приведения к присяге) как мера стимулирования правдивых показаний

Abstract

The article considers the legal institution of oath in foreign legal systems as a measure to encourage participants in criminal proceedings to give truthful testimony during judicial interrogation. The author uses the comparative and comparative legal analysis, a survey with an inferior alternative, and doctrinal analysis to compare the institution under discussion with other incentive measures and highlight its advantages. In the first part, the author highlights the domestic views on the legal incentive measures to encourage truthful testimony and dwells on their practical effectiveness and legitimacy in relation to individual participants in the criminal process. Analysing the legal measures proposed by Russian researchers, the author emphasizes that such measures, among other challenges, violate the rights of some participants in the criminal process (suspects, the accused). He also indicates some forensic shortcomings of the proposed measures, among which is the stimulation of errors in the perception of the event under investigation. According to the author, if the institution of oath has none of the described shortcomings, it indicates its viability. The second part of the article contains a normative comparative legal analysis of the legislation of foreign countries (Islamic Republic of Iran, Georgia, Germany, and the USA) in terms of the institution under consideration. The third part contains a justification from the standpoint of the domestic legal doctrine, as well as from the standpoint of psychology (taking into account the results of a survey with the effect of an inferior alternative), the possibility of introducing the institution of oath of a non-religious nature by participants in criminal proceedings during the interrogation in the trial as a measure encouraging truthful testimony. These testimonies will be “true” not from the persepctive of the subject of criminal procedural proof, but from the perspective of the interrogated person. In conclusion, the author speaks about the possibility of introducing a legal institution of a non-religious oath (swearing-in) in the Russian criminal process, at least, in the interrogation of participants in the criminal process at the stages of judicial proceedings in a criminal case.