The Investigator as a Subject of Proving and Making Procedural Decisions in Criminal Proceedings

The object of the research was the optimality of the legal position of the investigator in criminal proceedings. It is established that the assignment of the investigator to the prosecution by the law eliminates their duty to fully, comprehensively and objectively investigate the actual circumstances of the criminal case. The situation is aggravated by the unjustified restriction of the investigator's right to independently make a number of significant procedural decisions during the preliminary investigation. This prevents the investigator from forming a high-quality evidence base in a criminal case in a timely manner, which violates the person's right to access justice within a reasonable time. The author foregrounded the relationship between the legal position of the investigator in criminal proceedings and the evidentiary focus of their activities, refined the ratio of the volume of the procedural independence of the investigator and the limits of their discretion when gathering evidence, established cases of an unjustified restriction of the right of the investigator to independently determine the course and content of the process of proof and the associated decision-making on the investigative and other procedural actions, and argued the necessity of replacement of the institution of approval of the investigator's individual decisions by the institution of notification of the head of the investigative body. The research uses general scientific methods of cognition: formal-logical, comparative-legal, analysis, synthesis, as well as specific scientific methods: questionnaires, conversations, expert assessments. The findings of the study the author conducted in 10 constituent entities of the Russian Federation (Republic of Bashkortostan, Krasnodar, Lipetsk, Moscow, Voronezh, Ryazan, Samara, Tyumen Oblasts, etc.) in 2015-2019 are based on the opinions of more than 300 investigators in their questionnaires and interviews, the analysis of materials of criminal cases on crimes investigated by the investigators, the generalization of the data of the Main Informational and Analytical Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, the RF Prosecutor General's Office, and research on this issue. The author comes to the following conclusions. 1. Attributing the investigator to the prosecution does not mean that they do not have a procedural obligation to collect evidence that justifies the person who is charged with committing a crime. 2. The investigator has lost their procedural position in the mechanism for resolving criminal-legal disputes, as defined by the Statute of Criminal Proceedings. The narrowing of the investigator's procedural independence in the process of proof hinders the full achievement of the goals of criminal proceedings. At the same time, the investigator mainly bears the procedural responsibility for a correct and reasonable resolution of a specified dispute, which is seen as a discrepancy between the investigator's legal position and the need to ensure public interests in the criminal procedure sphere.

Keywords

Authors

References