Main directions of perfection of criminal liability for witness's and victim's perjury

According to the official statistics in the RussianFederation in 2008 there were 2539 crimes under Art. 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, in 2009 there were 2187crimes, in 2010 - 1755, in the first half of 2011 - 907 crimes. According to most researchers, this type of crimes is characterised by ahigh level of latency. Thus, the average rate of latency of crimes under Art. 307 of the Criminal Code, in the whole amounted to 33.02 inthe Russian Federation. The high latency of this type of offence connected with false testimony makes a critical attitude to officialstatistics about the level of the phenomenon. However, as some researchers mark, it is necessary to take into account the fact that crimestatistics largely do not reflect the crime itself, but the practice of public authorities to respond to crimes. In such circumstances, one ofthe priorities in the implementation of legal reform should be to strengthen and improve the institution of liability measures for perjury.In this regard, the author made the following suggestions to improve the criminal liability for witness's and victim's perjury. Firstly, aproposal is made for Article 307 of the Penal Code, setting out as follows: "The witness, victim, expert or translator should be exemptfrom criminal liability if they voluntarily declare the falsity of statements, conclusions, or knowingly wrong translation in the course ofinquiry, preliminary investigation or trial acting as a witness, expert or translator before the sentencing court or the court decision in thecase they participated in. The expediency of introducing the amendments to the law is justified, securing in Paragraph 40 of Article 5 ofthe Criminal Procedure Code that the testimonial privilege also works for former spouses, if they have been married at the time of givinginitial testimony. It is suggested to provide as an aggravating circumstance of the offence under Art. 307 of the Criminal Code "the sameactions if committed by prior agreement of perjury with others". In addition it is suggested to renew the institute of judicial oath in thecurrent Russian legislation.

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