Criminal Procedure

According to the criminal procedure legislation, the sources of evidence in criminal proceedings are testimony, material evidence, documents and expert advice. The most common source is testimony, which, according to the legislation, can be obtained only during the interrogation. However, in law enforcement practice there are cases when during some investigative actions, other than interrogation, for instance investigative experiment, inspection, search, the investigator receives from persons involved in it certain information relevant to the criminal proceedings. However, courts sometimes consider the results of such investigative actions inadmissible as evidence, because during their conduct the investigator has recorded testimony which does not meet the requirements of the legislation regarding the procedural form of their obtaining. Such situations lead to the fact that the mentioned information is not evaluated by the courts during the trial, persons, who provided these knowledge during conducting such investigative actions are not interrogated as witnesses, and the proper judicial assessment is not made of the circumstances of the criminal proceedings which were recorded in the protocol of the investigative action. Thus, in the article the author draws attention to the awareness of the essence of the testimony as the sources of evidence in criminal proceedings; considers problems which arise during the classification of investigative actions

This article examines relevant issues of criminal proceedings in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have focused their efforts on protecting democratic values and ensuring not only the rights and legitimate interests of their people, but also their lives and health. At the same time, the pandemic has affected not only the economies of countries, but also their democratic development and fundamental rights, which have always been a priority of any democratic
society. Courts and law enforcement authorities have faced challenges that have been and still are adequately addressed in order to ensure that the rights and legitimate interests of those seeking judicial protection are respected.
Each state independently assessed the degree of risks and the extent of permissible restrictions on the rights and freedoms of persons involved in the proceedings, so the present study analyses the different approaches that have been applied. At the same time, documents of
the Council of Europe for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) have gained high importance, because they, among others, have developed tools for Council of Europe member states to address the problems of ensuring access to justice in the pandemic. The generalization and widespread discussion of such experiences is important, because it will be useful for states to further improve existing legislation, taking into account best practices. Based on a study of changes introduced in the Ukrainian legislation to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease, conclusions are proposed about the nature and extent of the restrictions, as well as the principles on which they should be based and the guarantees to
be provided. Recommendations that will contribute to improving the regulation of access to justice in criminal matters in a pandemic are also proposed.
Key words: justice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; access to justice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic; judicial control over the protection of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of persons in criminal proceedings; the investigating judge; reasonable terms of criminal proceedings; publicity and openness of court proceedings; trial by videoconference.

As of 2020, 70 years have passed since the day of the adoption of the
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which Ukraine ratified in September 1997. It was from this date that the countdown to significant democratic transformations in Ukraine and the establishment of human and civil rights and freedoms began. In this article, the authors raise relevant issues of reforming the criminal process of Ukraine in the context of European standards. The old Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine was adopted in 1960 and was in force for almost half a century. During this time, it became obsolete and bore a significant imprint of the Soviet past, which was manifest in both the bodies that conducted the trial and had primarily repressive powers and the public interests that dominated the rights and legitimate interests of those involved in criminal justice.
The conditions under which the first steps aimed at realising the importance of the Convention and the value of human rights enshrined in it took place were not easy. The path of reform processes in criminal proceedings was associated with the confrontation of the Soviet past with modern transformation. It was difficult to realise the need to harmonise national legislation with European standards of human rights and freedoms and consolidate their perception as one of the necessary conditions for Ukraine’s integration into the European legal space, as well as the need for a conceptually new worldview for both the people of Ukraine and law enforcement bodies – officers, judges, and prosecutors.
The authors summarise the most important decisions of the ECtHR made on complaints against Ukraine during the period of the reform of criminal procedure legislation, analyse the problems identified by the ECtHR, and illustrate how the legislator implemented the ECtHR standards in national criminal procedure legislation. They note that on the basis of the Convention and the case-law of the ECtHR in criminal procedure legislation, important principles of criminal proceedings, such as adversarial proceedings, direct examination of evidence, the right to defence, the right not to testify against oneself and close relatives, and reasonable time are legitimised. For the first time, the legislation of Ukraine has enshrined a rule on the inadmissibility of evidence obtained as a result of a significant violation of human rights and freedoms. A separate segment of the article is devoted to the consideration of amendments to the criminal procedure legislation regarding the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of a person in respect of whom a measure of restraint in the form of custody is chosen. In order to ensure the right of a person to liberty and security, the position of an investigating judge and the institute of free legal aid have been introduced. In addition, the authors focus on the aspects of direct application of the Convention and ECtHR decisions in law enforcement practice without amending the legislation, as well as analyse the legislative perspectives arising from non-implemented ECtHR decisions.

The article dedicated the exploring the actual for modern law-enforcement practice of the questions, which connected with the closing of the criminal case, when there are not many attests to proof the guilt of a person; the suferer refused from the prosecution and exposition of the interpretation of the criminal and judicial legislation, which connected with the dispensation of investigator and procurator in closing of the criminal case. The author makes the inference about juridical imperfection of the criminal and judicial legislation in the part of the normative regulation of the required grounds for closing of the criminal investigation and suggests the doctrinal interpretation of the problems in the law-enforcement practice.
It is noted that the legal meaning of Article 4. 284 CPС, in our view, be interpreted systematically and consistently. In particular, the frst paragraph provides: «On the closure of criminal proceedings
investigator, prosecutor adopt a resolution, which may be appealed in the manner prescribed by this Code». In other words, the legislator establishes the general rule that the investigator and the prosecutor may close the criminal proceedings in cases where the reason for this is formalizing its decision in the form of resolution. However, the responsibility of investigating it considers only the closure of
the grounds provided for in paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 9 p. 1 art. 284 CCP provided that any person in the present proceedings was not notifed of the suspicion. If a person informed of the suspicion that a
criminal prosecutor closes the proceedings.

The urgency of the problem stated in the article is conditioned by amendments to the
criminal procedural legislation, which in a new way regulate the procedure of criminal
proceedings concerning criminal offences. The aim of the article is to investigate the procedure for conducting criminal proceedings for criminal offences and to make suggestions
for improving its regulatory framework. The basic approach to the study of this problem
was to conduct a critical analysis of the rules of the current criminal procedural legislation,
which regulate criminal proceedings for criminal offences, and to express views on rules’
proper understanding and application. Based on the analysis of the features of the normative regulation of criminal proceedings concerning criminal offences, the publication
comments on a number of norms of the current Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine,
which regulate both pre-trial investigation of criminal offences in the form of enquiries
and court proceedings against them; approaches to their elimination have been proposed.
The materials of the article represent both theoretical and practical values. They can be
used for further scientific investigation of the features of criminal proceedings regarding
criminal offences, as well as for the proper understanding and implementation of law enforcement criminal proceeding