Procedural status of prosecutor during the conduction of short inquiry

Abstract

The issues of conducting short inquiry from the position of prosecutor’s procedural status are considered. Low rate of applying short inquiry is caused by ignorance about this procedural form among the participants in criminal procedure. The initiators of conducting short inquiry were not suspects (accused), but their lawyers who followed by their own ambitions, not by the interests of defendants. The insufficiency of total time of short inquiry is noted. The author proposes to minimize prosecutors’ paperwork, notably to concentrate their attention on collecting crime data by conducting secret investigation operations, receiving explanations and other documentation. Obtained data should be processed according to police regulations. Confession of guilt, recognition of damage and consent with legal assessment of criminal act allow to collect only the evidence, indicating crime event and complicacy of a person (expertise should be established on court’s initiative). The favourable conditions of adequacy of collected evidence for establishing crime event, character and amount of damage, as well as guilt of committing crime are confirmed. The right of investigators not to examine evidences if they were not contradicted by suspect, victim or his/her representative (predetermined strength of evidence) is criticized. There is no short effective procedure of trying criminal cases with rational division of powers among the authorities, conducting criminal proceeding. The author proves the necessity of reasonable approach to prosecutor’s supervision of conducting short inquiry. Main tendency of further improvement of short inquiry procedure is redivision of powers among agencies in charge of preliminary investigation and prosecutor’s office.

Keywords

• short inquiry form
• investigator
• time of inquiry
• suspects
• status of prosecutor