Grounds for review of court decisions based on the jury’s decision in the appellate instance

Abstract

The subject of the paper is the procedural features and grounds for the appellate revision of the verdict, decided by the court with the participation of jurors.The purpose of the article is to is to assess the effectiveness of the rules on the grounds for review of courts’ decisions based on jury’s verdict.The description of methodology. The author uses formal-legal and comparative-legal methods during the scrutinize the text of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and international legislation. The court statistics is also analyzed.The main results and scope of their application. The author gives a general description of the legal concepts of cassation and appeal, their similarities and differences. The paper suggests statistical indicators of the activity of the jury as a court of first instance, as well as statistical characteristics of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation as a court of appeal and as a court of cassation. A brief description of the rules of appeal proceedings, the types of appealed decisions, powers and limits of the rights of appeal are also characterized. It is proposed to analyze the grounds for repealing or changing the ac-cusatory and acquittal decisions of courts with the participation of jurors, the interpretation of such grounds by higher courts through the resolution of specific criminal cases. Specific criminal cases examples are given, and foreign criminal procedure legislation is analyzed.Conclusions. The author suggests to replace the grounds for cancellation or modification of both accusatory and acquittal decisions of courts based on the jury’s decision with the grounds previously provided in art. 465 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR because of their clearer legal content.