Alteration of court charges: ways of legislative solution of the problem

Abstract

The article deals with the issues relevant for the criminal proceedings of Russia, connected with the practical need of legislative consolidation of procedural rules fixed in the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation (CCP RF) that provide a possibility for the court to alter charges brought by preliminary investigation bodies. The current procedural rules, to change accusation for a graver verdict, establish the procedure enshrined in Article 237 of the CCP RF, according to which the court must return a criminal case to the prosecutor, while the latter has to return the same to the investigator (interrogating officer). This practice in fact returns the law enforcer to the provisions of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Code of Criminal Procedure that maintained the existence of the institute of supplementary investigation; the court annually returned from 40 to 55 thousand cases to investigators within the framework of this institute. Having set the goal to explore the problematic issues of amending a faulty accusation in court and finding an optimal legal mechanism for the court’s amending a charge towards its stiffening, the authors, using the methods of scientific knowledge – dialectical approach, comparative legal method, statistical and systemic analysis – analysed the scholarly views on the said problem and the practice of enforcing Article 237 of the CCP RF by Russian courts; made a comparative research of foreign laws governing the issues of alteration of court charges. The authors, on the basis of the research results, made a conclusion on the need to develop an efficient legislative procedure in terms of altering indictment towards a more serious verdict by the prosecution – directly at the court session, under supervision of the court and without returning a case for supplementary investigation.