The Constitutional Court allowed juries to consider cases against minors if they are tried with adults

The Constitutional Court has allowed juries to try minors if they are involved in the same criminal case along with adult defendants, according to the court's website.

The court verified the constitutionality of paragraph 2 of part 2 of Article 30 of the Criminal Procedure Code at the request of the Kirov City Court, which is prosecuting the case under Part 4 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code (intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm, negligently resulting in the death of the victim). One adult and three teenagers are charged in this case. Other details of the case are not provided.

The adult defendant filed a petition to have his case considered by a jury, but the defense of the remaining defendants opposed this decision and asked to separate the teenagers' case into separate proceedings.

As a result, the court decided that the jury would try the case against all defendants, adults and minors, because separating the case into separate proceedings would interfere with the “comprehensiveness and objectivity of the resolution of both the separated case and the case tried by the jury.”

After the defense of minors protested this decision, the city court appealed to the Constitutional Court, since, in its opinion, paragraph 2 of part 2 of Article 30 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which prohibits juries from considering the cases of minors, comes into conflict in this case with part 2 of Article 325 of the Criminal Code , under which a case involving multiple defendants is tried by a jury against all defendants.

Having considered the request of the Kirov City Court, the Constitutional Court recognized paragraph 2 of part 2 of Article 30 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as constitutional, but allowed the jury to consider the cases of minors if the court concludes that it is impossible to separate the case against them into separate proceedings, since this would interfere with “comprehensiveness and objectivity resolution of the case”, and subject to “the absence of those crimes among those imputed to the defendants, the cases of which were removed from the substantive jurisdiction of the court with the participation of jurors.”