Problems of Protecting the Rights of a Private Prosecutor in Defamation Cases

Abstract

The growing complexity of public relations creates a need for the criminalization of some acts and de-criminalization of others. Defamation is one of the offenses affected by this trend. Some time after its de-criminalization, the crime of defamation was brought back to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. However, there is no actual legal mechanism in Russia that victims of defamation could use to fully protect their rights. The authors point out a trend for acquittals in criminal proceedings initiated after the complaints of private prosecutors when they concern deliberately false information that besmirches the honor and dignity of other people and harms their reputation, when these complaints are filed with the governmental, including the law enforcement, authorities. They present their research of court statistical data regarding cases heard by Justices of the Peace under Part 1, Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation between 2014 and the first half of 2018. The authors have analyzed the practices of Justices of the Peace in Ulyanovsk Region on criminal cases initiated under Part 1, Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. They use the examples of specific criminal cases to prove that judges use clauses of Art. 33 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and Art. 6 of the Federal Law «On the Procedure of Handling Applications of Citizens of the Russian Federation» when deciding cases based on Part 1, Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and protect the right of citizens to appeal to the governmental (including law enforcement) authorities; they point out that an appeal to governmental or local governance cannot be viewed as spreading deliberately false information. In this case, private prosecutors have no opportunity to protect their rights even if it is proven that the information is deliberately false, and they also have to bear additional expenses connected with the recovery of procedural costs. Besides, the research includes a comparative legal analysis of legislation on defamation in a number of foreign countries (the USA, China, the UAE and others) as well as the historical-legal analysis of the development of Russian legislation on liability for defamation.