The concept of “objective truth” should be restored as the main goal of Russian criminal law, the country’s head investigator told Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Search for objective truth was present as an objective in all Soviet Criminal Codes, but dropped after the Soviet Union’s demise as a “relic of Marxist-Leninist ideology,” head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said in an interview published on Friday.
Legislative amendments prepared by the Investigative Committee propose to restore it, giving courts more powers to search for objective truth during trials, Bastrykin told the governmental daily.
After Perestroika, Russia switched to the so-called Anglo-American doctrine, where the judge’s job is to decide between arguments of the competing parties, not to pursue the objective truth about a crime. The latter objective is a staple of the Romano-Germanic judicial system, which Russia has traditionally leaned toward, Bastrykin said.
The legislative changes should allow courts to return more cases to prosecutors for additional investigation, Bastrykin said. He did not say when the bill may be filed with the State Duma.
Bastrykin’s watchdog has been increasingly active since the Kremlin separated it from the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2011, vesting it with more independence. The investigators and the prosecutors became locked in a turf war immediately after the split, though the standoff quieted down in recent months.
Bastrykin’s proposals are theoretically sound, but would require a radical revamp of the whole court and investigation system in Russia, said Sergei Smirnov, a criminal law expert with the Yukov, Khrenov & Partners law firm.
“The courts already have a lot of authority and a lot of tasks, and we’ll just sink into a procedural mire if more responsibilities are added,” Smirnov said by telephone on Friday.
