Social and Legal Studios

Abstract

When a prosecutor intends to use any physical evidence or part thereof, or documents, or their copies, as an exhibit in the court, they (or investigator, under their instruction) have an obligation to provide access to them (making them available for studying, making copies or imprints of materials). Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine provides for mutual obligation of the defense party. The first objective of this publication is to make a on disclosure the folloving questions so what happens if a prosecutor or the investigator, on the prosecutor’s instruction, fails to comply with the requirements mentioned above as to providing access to any physical evidences or parts thereof, documents or their copies? The answer to this question can be found in part 12 of Article 290 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine: in particular, if a party in a criminal proceeding fails to disclose materials as described in this article, the court may not admit the information contained therein as evidence. In this case, the legislator provides two exceptions according to this rule, and interpret them is the second objective of this article. What decisions is the court supposed to make in a situation when some materials of pre-trial investigation were not disclosed to the other party because they were not declassified? Can evidence be admitted as adequate in a criminal investigation if it is provided in open procedural documents produced during procedural actions based on procedural documents, access to which was limited for being classified, and if the prosecutor did not provide access to the other party to such procedural documents when the pre-trial investigation was pronounced accomplished? The answers to the mentioned challenging questions constitute the third objective of my publication. Based on the available academic resources, legal precedents and my own academic opinion, I state that under the circumstances described above, the court of appeal can study the evidence not studied by the first instance court, only if the participants of the court proceeding petitioned for the study of such evidence during the consideration of the case in the first instance court. An important condition due to the process of law in making decisions and actions when such exceptional circumstances exist is not violating the right of the accused to defense. A right to defense is a component of the right to fair trial, as stipulated in Article 6 of the ECHR. If in the process of such investigation of determinations, rulings, petitions, a violation of the requirements of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine is established, the data provided in open procedural documents, for instance, records based on the results of criminal investigative measures or non-public investigative (search) actions, are inadmissible, because they were received during the procedure that started unlawfully

Keywords: opening materials of pre-trial investigation, charging document, non-public investigative (search) actions, materials of investigative and search activities

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