Defender: his legal status
Keywords:
defender, lawyer, legal status, criminal process, criminal proceedings, legal protection, accused, suspect, defender's rights, defender's dutiesAbstract
The legal status of the defense party in criminal proceedings, its features and shortcomings in the current legislation are analyzed. The provisions of the current legislation and the opinions of scientists regarding their legal evaluation are considered.
The human right to defense in criminal proceedings is one of the basic human rights enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. In the conditions of constant reform of the criminal procedural legislation, the legal status of the defender is an extremely important element in the implementation of the corresponding constitutional right of a person to protection.
Therefore, it is extremely important to study the legal status (rights and duties) of the defense attorney in criminal proceedings, to determine the scope of his powers and competences, which in turn significantly affect the effectiveness of solving cases on the merits.
The content of the work contains examples and opinions of scientists that confirm the imperfection of the current legislation in regulating the issue of determining the legal status of a lawyer in criminal proceedings.
The Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine defines the legal status of a lawyer as a defender in criminal proceedings. It envisages both the possibility of the suspect or the accused for legal protection, as well as certain requirements for the lawyer, the process of involving the lawyer in the case, and the duties of the lawyer.
The legal status of an attorney is also regulated by the Law of Ukraine «On the Bar and Legal Practice». The rights and duties of a lawyer in these two normative legal acts contain mostly the same articles. However, some of the procedural actions still differ, which leads to some discrepancies in the legislation and makes it impossible to clearly determine the legal status of a lawyer in criminal proceedings.
The content emphasizes this error on the part of the legislator. Based on the opinion of scientists who researched this issue, a way to solve this problem is proposed, namely, the consolidation of the clearly established rights of the lawyer in the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine.
In the absence of such regulation, some procedural actions of the lawyer may be recognized as essentially illegal. The court and the prosecution may find them inappropriate and inadmissible.
References
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