UDC

Authors

Abstract

Trial within a reasonable timeframe is an essential criterion of fairness in criminal procedure. Reforming the national justice system, Russian authorities each time set a goal to increase its efficiency and eliminate red tape in judicial criminal proceedings. The judicial reform of 1864 radically changed the criminal procedure by increasing its mobility and developing legal norms aimed at its acceleration, but still failed to reach the ideal of speedy trial. Factors impeding a timely criminal trial, such as judges’ overload, mass non-appearance of parties to the trial, protracted forensic examinations, as well as poor and lengthy preliminary inquiries, in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought the problem of speedy trial to the fore again. In the course of the current judicial reform, largely influenced by the legal stand of the European Court of Human Rights, Russian justice has over 20 years been steadily and successfully fighting the “chronic disease” called judicial red tape. As a result, there were introduced: the principle of reasonable time of criminal proceeding, shorter forms of trial and new electronic communication allowing the court to hear the persons required (video conferencing, SMS notification). In addition, the control has been tightened over the time spent on the proceedings and search for fugitive offenders; forensic activities have been further developed, improved and accelerated. By now, the situation has been mainly stabilized; however, lawyers and legislators have yet to develop and implement an effective mechanism eliminating intentional delays by dishonest participants in the proceedings abusing their procedural rights and failing to perform their procedural duties.

Keywords

References

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