Evidentiary Privilege as a Specific Compromise in Russian Criminal Law

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200321.087How to use a DOI?

Keywords

immunity, refusal to testify, evidentiary privilege, liability of a witness, immunized persons, interrogation of a witness, witness testimony

Abstract

The evidentiary privilege complies with the norms of international law, is based on the Constitution of the RF, procedural and other legislation of the RF. In terms of its “legal root” it is national, in terms of the procedural position of the immunized person – witness, in terms of socio-demographic – kin-ship and functional; in terms of the range of crimes – limited (in relation to one crime). The domestic procedural legislation enshrines a variety of subjects with immunity. Criminal law prohibits the questioning of a person as a witness and the right to refuse to testify, which differ both in substance and volume. In the latter case, the consent of the immunized person to give relevant evidence is not excluded, which raises a problem: whether there is an offence under Article 308 of the Criminal Code. Literature also discusses the meaning of the term “testifying against oneself and one’s loved ones” in relation to the problem in question, and attempts are made to delineate the boundaries of information about which an immunized person cannot be interrogated. In the current version, the note to Article 308 of the RF Criminal Code does not cover all persons vested with immunity by procedural or other federal legislation. This fact demonstrates the fragility of the regulation of this type of immunity. In order to ensure the completeness of the criminal legislation, the note should be supplemented with an indication of other categories of immunized persons, using a blanket form of the norm presentation.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yu.V. Gracheva
AU  - S.V. Malikov
AU  - A.I. Chuchaev
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/03/24
TI  - Evidentiary Privilege as a Specific Compromise in Russian Criminal Law
BT  - Proceedings of the XVII International Research-to-Practice Conference dedicated to the memory of M.I. Kovalyov (ICK 2020)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 71
EP  - 75
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200321.087
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200321.087
ID  - Gracheva2020
ER  -