Ensuring Access to Justice for Victims of Iatrogenic Crimes

Abstract

The need to ensure access to justice for victims of intentional or negligent crimes causing harm or the death of the patient (iatrogenic crimes) committed by medical and (or) pharmaceutical industry workers is conditioned by the following. Crime report check and preliminary investigation take excessively long time and then result in orders to dismiss a criminal complaint, prosecution and a criminal case due to statutes of limitations on the prosecution of an offense. The authors substantiate a number of proposals aimed at improving legislation and law enforcement practice in iatrogenic crimes cases: amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in order to proportionally increase the statute of limitations in these cases; supplement into clause 5, part 1, art. 198 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation provides for the right of the suspect, accused, his defense attorney, victim, representative to be present with the permission of the investigator at the forensic examination, to give explanations to the expert via video conferencing systems if technically possible. The proposal expressed in the procedural literature on the production of forensic examinations in cases of iatrogenic crimes not in the expert institutions of those departments that conduct a preliminary investigation, but in «independent» expert institutions, is subjected to critical analysis. It is shown that the absence of expert methods in itself does not entail the inadmissibility of the expert’s conclusion.