‘‘OTHER DOCUMENTS’’ IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS: CONTENT WITHOUT PROCEDURAL FORM
The article raises the problem of the absence of a procedural form “other documents” for information contained in documents of various physical forms. The absence of such a structural element of evidence as a proper procedural form for information that is significant for a criminal case, taking into account their features and characteristics, as well as endowing them with a procedural form that is unusual for them leads to the loss of such evidence of the property of admissibility and, as a consequence, does not allow them to be considered as evidence. Trying to find the reasons for such an attitude of the legislator to “other documents”, the author turns to the criminal procedural legislation that was in force in Russia earlier, traces the period of the formation of criminal procedural norms regulating such a source of evidence as other documents, while establishing that the development of this type of evidence should be in the closest relationship with the cognitive features of the development of society, which at a certain stage was lost. The imperfection of the rules governing the procedure for working with information that is significant for the case, contained in documents of various physical forms, lies in the fact that the legislator actually means only written other documents, which is also typical for the criminal procedural legislation of most states in the post-Soviet space. The unresolved problem in theory leads to the fact that the law enforcement officer, not having received sufficient explanations from the legislator, applies to such documents the rules similar to working with material evidence. All this sharply reduces the potential of a universal source of evidence - “other documents” and leads to their use on a leftover basis. In order to resolve the problem, the author, taking into account the inter-sectoral approach, provides arguments in favor of creating a differentiated procedural form for written “other documents” and “other documents” of a different form, which will allow the use of the necessary procedural means to ensure the preservation of significant characteristics of information when endowing them with the property of admissibility and will to promote the effectiveness of criminal procedural evidence.