Judges have no jury

An increasing percentage of justifying verdicts is canceled in appeal authorities

More than two years ago, in June 2018, jury courts began to be carried out at the district level. Six jury and several spare are invited to the court to participate in the court investigation in criminal cases. At the end, they must together answer at least three questions about the crime itself: whether the crime event has been proved, whether the involvement of the accused and his guilt have been proved. And if the answers to them are affirmative, the jury answers the fourth question - whether the accused leniency deserves. The decision on who will judge - jury or professional judge - accepts the defense, that is, the accused after consulting with a lawyer.

Not everyone can petition such a trial, but only those who are accused of a narrow circle of crimes. As practice has shown, the most massive in Russian courts in the offers of crimes considered by the jury became the murder and intentional infliction of serious bodily harm, resulting in the death of the victim.

This reform was initiated by the President to increase the openness of Russian legal proceedings and the development of citizens' participation in the administration of justice. How did Russian judges take these goals of reform?

An important indicator of judges confidence in citizens' decisions is the number of cancellation of acquittal verdicts.

Russian criminal justice is characterized by a clearly expressed “indictment” - the probability of being justified in court or get a different rehabilitating decision is no more than two chances of a thousand.

So, for the still not published, but already submitted in the storage of the judicial statistics of the Judicial Department under the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, data for the first half of 2020, Russian district judges made decisions in relation to just more than 243.3 thousand people, and four out of five (79.2%) were accusations. The affairs of 17.2% of those who appeared before the court were terminated on non -rehabilitating grounds, and the cases of another 2.4% of people were returned to prosecutors. The proportion of persons in respect of whom acquittals were issued or other rehabilitating decisions were made was 0.2%. This is only 548 people over the past six months. At the same time, 99 of them received such decisions on private prosecution, when the state did not participate in the submission of evidence. And another 57 people were justified by the jury. Is it a lot or little?

In total, only 165 cases were examined in the first half of this year with the participation of jury in the districts of the district link and decisions were made in relation to 191 people . This is significantly less than the first half of the last year - then the district courts considered 225 cases and sentenced to 284 persons . This year, quarantine measures and almost complete closure of legal proceedings for two months had a significant impact on the speed of the case.

As you can see, the share of acquittal decisions amounted to almost 30% in the first half of this year (57 of 191). This is slightly higher than the indicator in the first half of 2019 (21%), and even for the entire last year, the share of acquittal verdicts was 25%. However, from empirical studies collected during the observation of the jury at the district level (with the support of the Khamovniki Foundation), we know that the prosecution is mandatory for every acquittal.

The reform of the jury had an important consequence: if earlier, when the jury was carried out only at the level of the regional and equal courts, the only appeal for all cases with the participation of the jury was the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, today each regional court is developing its own policy of the cancellations of decisions adopted with the jurors in district courts. Somewhere-as, for example, in the Vladimir region-all acquittal verdicts made at the level of district courts are recognized as legal. Somewhere-for example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory-all of them are canceled by a higher authority, and things are sent for review. The case in the Republic of Crimea is widely known when the citizens have already made an acquittal three times, but the case was sent for a revision to the capital of the region for the fourth time.

How many excuses of excuses? Statistics at the level of district courts are disappointing: from the beginning of the reform, the ratio of the acquittals made by the jurors and the cancellation of such decisions for higher courts is growing.

In the first half of the reform, it was 21% (6 cancellation, 29 acquittal verdicts). This can be explained by the fact that by not all acquitting decisions the appeal managed to take place.

In 2019, the excuse ratio of excuses increased to 55% (84 and 154, respectively). The first half of 2020 shows a record increase in this indicator to 88% (57 excuses, and 50 such verdicts were canceled).

This growth, of course, should be interpreted carefully. The indicator does not mean that the decisions that were adopted during this period are canceled. On the contrary, the statistics include the abolition of decisions made in the previous period. And of course, the restrictions during the pandemic touched primarily the courts of the district link. Participation in the first instance with jury is always carried out in person, while the consideration of the case in appeal, without jury, can be carried out through a video conferencing from a pre -trial detention center. Therefore, at the district level, the consideration of cases has stopped, while the appeal in some courts of the regional level could be carried out during severe quarantine measures. An accurate assessment will be shown data for the entire 2020.

Data on the cancellations of the verdicts of the courts at the regional and equated level have been not available for the fact that now complaints about them are considered by interregional appeal courts, however, a similar tendency to massive cancellation of the acquittal verdicts was recorded at this level and before.

So far, one can only indicate these data as an important trend and assume that the Russian court, contrary to the goals of the reform, refuses citizens who go to the jury on the agendas, the right to make an acquittal. Not only the prosecutors, but also the judges in the appeal (with the rare exception of some regional courts) can hardly recognize the right of citizens to participate responsibly in the administration of justice and disagree with the acquitting verdicts accepted by them. Against the background of the discussion on the expansion of the jurisdiction of the jury, it is worth discussing the policy of canceling their verdicts.