The fundamental importance of the ban on turning for the worse for the criminal procedure system

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of the expediency of a criminal case’s returning to the prosecutor at the stage of appointment and preparation of a court session in Russian criminal proceedings. This problem is relevant to the science of criminal procedure.The purpose of the study is to analyze critically the practice of returning of a criminal case back to the prosecutor in order to correct mistakes made at the pre-trial stages of the proceedings according to the new concept of justice independence and the absence of an accusatory bias in the court functioning.The methodological basis of the study is a set of scientific techniques, focused mostly on the dialectical approach, which made it possible to determine the essential characteristics of the prohibition to turn the criminal proceedings in Russia for the worse. Both general scientific (analysis, synthesis, systematic method) and specific scientific methods (formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal) of knowledge were also used. The analysis helped to formulate the position of understanding the turn for the worse as an independent principle of criminal procedural law, to study the procedural form of the turn for the worse. The synthesis method made it possible to determine the return of the criminal case to the prosecutor at the stage of appointment and preparation of the court session as a holistic institution of the criminal procedure. The systematic approach allowed to determine not only the mixed nature of the mechanism for changing the prosecution to a more serious one, but the investigative organization of pre-trial proceedings and its place in the structure of criminal proceedings, the separation of the investigative and “accusatory powers” of the prosecutors as well as their balance. The historical method let us trace the evolution of the prohibition to turn the Soviet and Russian criminal procedural systems for the worse. The comparative-legal method made it possible to assess the potential of domestic legislators' reception of foreign experience of regulating the prohibition to turn for the worse and formulate proposals to improve the Russian criminal procedural legislation.The main scientific results of this research consist of justification of the conclusion of the conversion expediency of the domestic judicial proceedings to the adversarial model of accusation which is carried out within the trial on the previously filed charge. The presentation of a new charge (criminal action) in court and the procedure of supplementing the charge change it for the worse. This model of re-indictment for the worse for the defendant appears to be fairer and more convenient both for the prosecuting authority and for the legal organization of combating crime. The changeover to the suggested form of implementation of the ban to turn for the worse in the institution of bringing and changing charges in court is possible only in a systematic link with the reform of the preliminary investigation. Conclusion. The institution of the criminal case returning by the court to the prosecutor in order to change the charge to a more serious one when implementing the adversarial model of bringing charges in the criminal procedure system of Russia will fully satisfy the concept of independence of justice administration and the absence of an accusatory bias in the activities of the court, while at the same time with fairly organized the prosecutorial power aimed at countering crime.The section 1 was prepared by N.N. Lysov, section 2 by K.D. Vanyan (together with M.T. Tashilin), section 3 by A.S. Shuisky (together with I.R. Gilmanov), section 4 by V.V. Kosterin.