Differentiation of the criminal procedural form in relation to accomplices of organized forms of complicity in the form of allocation of criminal proceedings in relation to one or more of them.

Abstract

The article highlights the issue of segregation of criminal proceedings in respect of one or more accomplices to differentiate the criminal procedural form of criminal proceedings in respect of accomplices in organized forms of complicity. In the case of differentiation of the criminal procedural form for a participant in an organized form of complicity by separating criminal proceedings, courts mostly do not have problems in establishing the nature and degree of participation of the member of the organized group in respect of whom the trial is being conducted in the separated criminal proceedings. At the same time, the verdicts do not have any problems with establishing the signs of an organized form of complicity (organized group, criminal organization), of which the perpetrator committed the relevant criminal offense as a member. When considering the materials of the segregated criminal proceedings against one or more accomplices of organized forms of complicity, courts should not, in their verdict, be excluded from deciding the fate of evidence in another criminal proceeding (i.e., the original criminal proceeding from which the materials of the proceedings against the accomplice were segregated), as this may adversely affect their properties. It is recommended that courts in this case indicate in the verdict that the fate of material evidence in the separated criminal proceedings against an accomplice in an organized form of complicity will be decided after consideration of the original criminal proceedings from which the materials were separated during the pre-trial investigation. When distributing procedural costs among participants in organized forms of complicity, courts mostly use various criteria for differentiating the criminal procedural form of such a decision, such as the criteria of personalization, specification, proportionality, and consideration of the type of accomplice. However, there are cases when only the proportionality criterion is used for this purpose. At the same time, the recovery of procedural costs from participants in unorganized forms of complicity (for example, the recovery of procedural costs for conducting an examination of each member of a group of persons by prior conspiracy) is carried out using only one criterion – proportionality. When passing a verdict on an accomplice whose criminal proceedings have been separated into separate proceedings, the court may impose on him/her the obligation to compensate for the damage caused jointly with the previously convicted person who was an accomplice in the jointly committed criminal offense. Key words: differentiation, criminal liability, criminal proceedings, complicity, accomplice, organized form of complicity, criminal procedural form, sentence, court, allocation of criminal proceedings, procedural costs, determining the fate of material evidence, compensation for damage caused by a criminal offense.