Adversarial principle and concept of truth in criminal proceedings of the republic of Azerbaijan

Abstract

The paper provides the author’s approach to understanding the issues of adversarial system and truth, evidence and proof in criminal proceedings, the main approaches to the issue of truth in the criminal procedure legislation of the Azerbaijan Republic and the Russian Federation. Adversarial nature of judicial proceedings is assessed as an effective mechanism for ensuring equal participation of the parties in establishment of evidence, as manifestation of the essence of the modern criminal procedure. The author analyzes the problems of the relationship of objective truth and the adversarial nature of the criminal procedure, correlation between adversarial system, equality of the parties and the establishment of objective truth in a criminal case. The paper justifies the conclusion that if at the time of the initial verdict, the parties and the court did everything that was possible under those conditions, then by the time the sentence was pronounced, it was actual and was perceived by everyone as a statement “beyond reasonable doubt”. This approach is more consistent with the nature of procedural knowledge and makes it possible to organically combine, rather than oppose, the pursuit of truth and adversarial nature in modern criminal proceedings.