Review of an otherwise final jury trial decision: legal tradition and international law standards of criminal justice

This article examines forms of appeal of the jury trial decision in Russia, England and France. The present problem is becoming a critical issue today because of the significance of jury trial itself and the implementation of the international law standards of criminal justice into the Russian criminal procedure system. Current practice shows that harmonization of Russian and foreign legislation does not always correspond to Russian legal tradition and the reforming of legal procedure sometimes lacks theoretical grounds. The amending of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and entitling a person to appeal all types of cases was aimed at guaranteeing that everyone shall have the right to have their case revised by a more experienced and competent court. However, the possibility to file appeals against the decision rendered by jury trial has failed to produce the expected result, since comparing jury trial and professional judges and calling the latter "more experienced and competent" cannot be considered to be correct. Moreover, appealing the decisions rendered by jury trial does not comply with legal tradition and theory of criminal procedure. In fact, according to the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation it is a formal act of a routine nature so long as the grounds for appealing the jury trial decision are as follows: a violation of criminal procedure law, a wrong application of the criminal law, and the injustice of the verdict, i.e. the same grounds that used to be the ones for cassational appeal as stipulated in Sections 2-4, Article 379 of the RF Criminal Procedure Code. "A discrepancy between the court's conclusions set out in the verdict and the actual circumstances of the criminal case established by the court of the first instance" still fails to be the ground for revoking the jury trial decision. This enables us to make a conclusion that cassation procedure is one of the possible ways to review the decision rendered by jury trial, since this is the only procedure that coincides with the function of jury trial, theory of criminal procedure and Russian legal tradition. International law standards with regard to entitling a person to appeal all types of cases cannot be projected onto jury trial issues. Besides, it is the French tradition in filing an appeal (in its strictest sense) against the decision rendered by jury trial that can be implemented without affecting the latter; here the criminal case is revised by jurors and a professional judge.

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