Some proposals for improving the regulatory enforcement of the provisions of p. 3-1, part 1, art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine

Abstract

The issues considered in the article correspond to such international and European standards of criminal justice as ensuring the right to an effective pre-trial investigation and the right to a fair trial, in terms of the legal certainty of the formulation of the circumstances provided in Clause 3-1 Part 1 of Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine (one of the grounds for closing criminal proceedings by the court). A number of practical aspects of the application of Clause 3-1 Part 1 of Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine of the criminal procedural college of Ukraine in the light of the positions set forth in the decision of the Joint Chamber of the Cassation Criminal Court of the Supreme Court of February 13, 2023 (in particular, that the concept of «crime against the life and health of a person» covers not only the crimes provided for in section II of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, but may also include other types of crimes in which the object of encroachment is public relations regarding the safety of life and health of a person).The article draws attention to certain disadvantages of the normative consolidation of the provisions of Clause 3-1, Part 1, Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine. In particular, it is substantiated that the provisions of Clause 3-1 Part 1 of Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine are not sufficiently coordinated with the norms of criminal law, which establish the statute of limitations for bringing criminal liability (Articles 49, 106 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), in the part of formulation of the cases, in the presence of which the court cannot close criminal proceedings. Suggestions for improving criminal procedural legislation have been formulated. In particular, Clause 3-1 Part 1 of Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code is proposed to be presented in the following version:«the person who committed the criminal offense has not been identified, in the case of the expiration of the statute of limitations for prosecution, except the cases when according to the law of Ukraine on criminal liability, the statute of limitations is not applied or the crime may be punished by life imprisonment».In addition, attention was also drawn to a legal and technical disadvantage: the basis provided in Clause 3-1, Part 1, Art. 284 of the Criminal Procedure Code, repeated twice (in Paragraphs 5 and 7 of Part 1 of Article 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code, in Paragraphs 3 and 4 of Part 2 of Article 284 of the Criminal Procedural Code). Such duplication has no meaningful load and needs to be excluded.