Procedural Legal Personality of the Subject of a Crime

Abstract

The article examines the conformity and interaction of the actual and procedural statuses of criminal procedure participants within the framework of the cross-cutting mechanism of criminal law regulation. The author concludes that standing arises at the time of the actual emergence of the ability to exercise procedural rights and bear the relevant duties, since the procedural status of a person is established on the basis of its actual position and is only drawn up by a procedural decision, but is not formed by it. The specifics of the person’s sanity at various stages of criminal procedure directly affects his procedural capacity. If a person has committed an act prohibited by criminal law in a state of insanity or he has a mental disorder after committing a crime, making it impossible to impose a sentence or execute it, then such a participant in criminal proceedings may be declared procedurally incompetent if his mental state does not allow him to exercise procedural rights, under Articles 46 and 47 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (part 1 of Article 437 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), or participate in a court hearing (part 1 of Article 441 of the Code of Criminal Procedure). In this case, the law enforcer every time when addressing this issue should resort to the help of experts involved in forensic psychiatric examination, and, if necessary, request a medical conclusion of a psychiatric hospital. Therefore, it would be wrong to assume that this participant in criminal proceedings is always procedurally incapable, since the criminal law aspect of a person’s irresponsibility is not always of legal importance in determining procedural capacity.