Get up, the court is silent! The verdict will no longer be read in full

Irina Mishina

This amendment, adopted a week ago, probably would have remained unnoticed if it were not for the noise raised by the legal community in professional forums. The appeal of the well-known lawyer Stalina Gurevich received wide publicity. Gurevich is convinced that reading out the full text of the verdict is important from the point of view of the interests of civil society. She severely criticized the amendments of the Supreme Court and the State Duma:

“This disgusting initiative completely violates the principle of transparency of the parties in the process and the transparency of justice in general. All court hearings are open. If they are not closed by a special procedure, then any person can come to court and listen to how justice is carried out. That is, anyone can listen to the verdict and draw a conclusion to what extent the judicial system complies with the principles of equality, how much it evaluates the evidence in the process, how much the evidentiary part is respected, ”explained Stalina Gurevich. The lawyer also believes that now it is impossible to exclude the possibility of abuse, when first they will pass a sentence, and only then the entire text of the conclusion will be adjusted to it.

In terms of the transparency of justice, Gurevich agrees with Stalin's lawyer for civil and arbitration cases Lyubov Goncharova: “The trial, in addition to passing a sentence, performs an important educational function. A person can come to court himself and see how the verdict is passed. This is in accordance with the principles of law. So people who care about the purity of the law can express fair dissatisfaction. It’s just that the court should not be limited to clerical functions, it’s true.”

Lawyer Alexander Onuchin agrees with her: "In cases of private prosecution and in a special order, it is permissible to read out only the introductory and operative parts. In other cases, no!"

It is worth noting that this amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure was prepared five years ago, but then it was criticized by everyone, including State Duma deputies. We asked Vladimir Kalinichenko, a well-known criminal lawyer, a former investigator for especially important cases under the USSR Prosecutor General, to comment on her. His opinion turned out to be unequivocal and categorical: “Any sentence takes at least 20 pages. Besides, everyone knows him well. Everyone is interested in the operative part. When the entire verdict is read out, in full, I begin to feel sick. Especially if there are many episodes in the crime, listening to all this standing up for a long time is very tiring. The same actions are listed many times... Reading the sentence in its entirety or only in its operative part does not affect the appeal against the verdict. After all, it is the operative part that is being appealed. So I see only positive things for myself in this measure, ” criminal lawyer Vladimir Kalinichenko told NI.

Experienced criminal lawyer Irina Krasnova agrees with him: "The announcement of the verdict is an atavism. A waste of time. I think it is enough to announce the operative part and immediately hand over copies to all participants in the process. Immediately after the announcement".

At the same time, in the announcement of the verdict, many see a manifestation of publicity. “The announcement of the verdict is the most important guarantee of publicity, publicity and transparency, without which justice cannot be considered as such at all”, - lawyer Yuliy Tai believes.

If you look, there are no contradictions with the Code of Criminal Procedure in the amendment. Part 7 Art. 241 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation states that in certain cases only the operative and introductory part of the sentence can be read out in court, the court is not obliged to read out all sentences in full, with detailed motivation. The Code of Criminal Procedure allows the court to pronounce only the introductory and operative parts of the verdict, for example, in the case of a criminal case being considered in a closed court session or in the case of a criminal case on crimes in the field of economic activity, as well as on crimes provided for in Articles 205-206, 208, part 2. 4 article 211, part 1 article 212, as well as articles 275, 275.1, 276, 279 and 281 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. However, this legislative norm is often interpreted too broadly by judges. Particularly "inventive" judges sometimes deliberately decide to close the court session in order to avoid fixing it under the audio protocol and to be able to announce only the introductory and operative parts of the verdict. In addition, errors in the procedural registration of criminal cases are not uncommon.

Experts have other concerns as well. “Now among lawyers, the main part of the discussion touches on one issue: sometimes the announced verdict differs from the text. Due to such discrepancies, sentences were canceled in some cases. Colleagues - lawyers in criminal cases give examples of such abuses, - explained "NI" lawyer in civil and arbitration cases Lyubov Goncharova. - In general, in civil cases and in arbitration, only the operative part of the verdict is traditionally read out, so most of the claims are from criminal lawyers. Most of them, with whom I had to communicate on this topic, "for" reading only the introductory and operative parts of the verdict. In general, this discussion has been going on for a long time, and one of the arguments in favor of reading out only the introductory and operative parts is that a voluminous sentence is often read out in a patter, it is difficult to perceive it. This amendment does not affect the essence and objectivity of the verdict. It is important to get exactly the text of the verdict so that it can be reasonably appealed. The main argument of those who are against this amendment is that there may be discrepancies between the announced part of the verdict and the written part”.

It is worth noting that criminal cases are published in full on the GAS Justice website and on the website of the Moscow City Court, so anyone can familiarize themselves with their full text in any case.