On the activities and procedural status of the prosecutor at the stage of preparation for the court session

The article substantiates that one of the reasons for the different understandings in theory and practice of the prosecutor's activities at the stage of preparation for the trial in a criminal case is the ambiguity of some concepts and formulations used in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and in the Federal Law “On the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation”. In this regard, in order to concretize and clarify the prosecutor's activities at this stage of the criminal process, the author proposes to use a narrow interpretation and understanding of the concepts “judicial proceedings”, “court”, “consideration of cases by courts”. The importance of the moment after which the prosecutor becomes a public prosecutor is due to the fact that the public prosecutor has procedural powers that the prosecutor does not have (for example, to object to a motion by the accused for the court to apply a special procedure for the proceedings). The author draws attention to a number of features of the regulations of the stage under consideration: the participation of the prosecutor in the preliminary hearing is not mandatory; the criminal procedure law and orders of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia provide for the possibility of participating in a preliminary hearing and endow the prosecutor with the necessary powers for this, not the public prosecutor; a preliminary hearing is possible even in the absence of a timely notified defense lawyer, regardless of whether, as a general rule, the participation of a defense lawyer in criminal proceedings is mandatory; the judge does not have the authority to consider and resolve questions of fact - about the evidence and validity of the charge, which is especially obvious in the case of jury participation in a criminal case (it is the jury who is authorized to decide on questions of fact, but not the professional judge); the essence of the accusation is not stated, the parties do not present evidence supporting the charge to the court, this evidence is not examined, there is no debate of the parties, the judge holds a preliminary hearing alone, the preliminary hearing is held in a closed court session. Based on the analysis of these features, the author comes to the following conclusions: there is no need to support the public prosecution at the preliminary hearing stage and at the entire stage in question; the prosecutor does not support public prosecution and is not a public prosecutor; the activities of the prosecutor at the stage of preparation for the trial can be viewed as an important part of the preparation for the upcoming support of public prosecution at the next stage of the trial and, at the same time, as activities to ensure the validity and legality of the charge.

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