Author

Spirin A.V.

Title of article

What should the powers of prosecutor regarding discovery of criminal cases and inspection materials be?

Section

The problems of legal science and law enforcement practice: young researchers’ view

Issue, year

1 (31) 2015

Abstract

Exercising the powers of prosecutor to supervise procedural activity of preliminary investigation bodies are considered as constitutional guarantee of protecting rights and liberties of man and citizen in the course of criminal proceedings. Prosecutor’s powers should be adequate and not derogating investigator’s procedural independency. Two groups of prosecutor’s powers (Article 37 of the RF Criminal Procedure Code) respecting their correspondence with above mentioned requirements are estimated, notably: 1) powers to detect law violations committed by preliminary investigation bodies as well as their reasons and favouring conditions; 2) powers to remove these law violations, their reasons and favouring conditions. The obligation of supervising officer to motivate the discovery of case materials is criticized due to its absurdity: supervised person obtains consent on supervision. Basing on study of prosecutors’ practice the author concludes that motivation of such inquiries is formal. Some requirements for prosecutor’s inquiry are provided: it should be obligatory for head of a preliminary investigation body to whom it is addressed; it can seek discovery of the materials of all the inspections and criminal cases; it should not contain inquiry’s motivation; it should establish reasonable time of execution conformable to reasonable time for prosecutor’s insight; it implies learning the materials of dismissed, suspended, terminated criminal cases in a room assigned by the prosecutor. It’s summarized that possibility to execute full supervision should be real, not declared. Assessment of investigator’s procedural activities and decisions is possible only by full and timely learning of the materials of criminal cases and pretrial inspections.

Keywords

prosecutor, powers of prosecutor, investigator, inquiry, criminal case, inspection materials, crime report.

References

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