On the issue of procedural legal advocation of a civil plaintiff in criminal proceedings: doctrine and practical problems, ways to overcome them

Abstract

The issue of the procedural status of a civil plaintiff in criminal proceedings and the issue of a person’s right to compensation for damage caused by a criminal offense has always been in the center of attention of lawyers - academics and practicing practitioners. The relevance of the chosen topic and the purpose of the research is due to certain doctrinal and practical gaps in the criminal procedural legislation of Ukraine, as well as contradictions between the norms of criminal procedural law, civil procedural law, and the provisions of inheritance law, which arise in the conditions of criminal proceedings, and are caused by death (or the condition, which makes it impossible to participate) of the injured person, who is a civil plaintiff in a civil claim for damages, at the stage of pre-trial and judicial criminal proceedings. Taking into account the set goal of criminal proceedings, which consists, among other things, in compensating the injured person for the moral and (or) property damage caused to him by a criminal offense, in this article the author not only analyzes individual scientific views and examines the relevant legal norms regulating procedural procedure of criminal legal succession, however, attention is emphasized and own proposals are made to improve the legal mechanism of legal succession of a participant in criminal proceedings, such as a civil plaintiff in a civil claim for damages presented in criminal proceedings. In conducting scientific research, the author used the formal-logical (dogmatic) method in interpreting the normative content of laws and formulating the definitions of individual legal concepts of the research issues, as well as the method of systemic-structural analysis, which contributed to the study of types of legal conflicts and gaps. Based on the results of the scientific research, the author outlined separate doctrinal and practical problems of the studied issue, and outlined the conclusions regarding the need to improve the current version of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and clarify the procedural rights of the civil plaintiff during procedural succession in criminal proceedings, by adding a new article to the Criminal Procedure Law, and made suggestions to the specified edition.