ON ENSURING THE RIGHT TO TRUE COURT/LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AND REBUTTING THE CHARGE
On the basis of requirements of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and international legal acts, in particular, the European Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms authors of the given article consider the right of the accused to true legal proceedings as well as his/her ability to rebut the charge against him/her based on summoning the persons testifying his/her having committed the crime for interrogation. The complexity, ambiguousness and diversity of the component structure of the right to true court proceedings generate various interpretations of the significance of its certain component rules to ensure the right of the parties in criminal proceedings. Sometimes in the literature some authors make statements that contradict the essence of the right to true legal proceedings, reject its absolute character; consider the possibility to restrict it due to necessity to ensure other legally significant interests and conventional rights. In this article the authors prove the erroneousness of such approach to interpret one of the fundamental well-known legal institutions, that is, the right to true legal proceedings. There are two systems in the right to true legal proceedings involving a system of rules that form the individual’s rights to defend his/her interests in a fair manner during the trial as well as a system of guarantees that ensures the procedure of observing these rights, interconnectedness and interdependence of which provide the required result. The authors note that the most important component of the right to true legal proceedings is the authority of the accused to demand to conduct interrogation of witnesses testifying against him/her in his/her presence and to ask questions. This power is fixed in subsection "D" section 3 of Article 6 of the European Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, its implementation in the Russian Federation has been constantly criticized by the European Court of Human Rights. Taking it into account authors of the given article point out the rules to be fixed in the criminal-procedural legislation of the Russian Federation that provide the accused with appropriate opportunities; suggest options to improve these opportunities; pay attention to necessity to change the approach identifying the aims related to certain investigative actions, namely confrontation.