PROBLEMS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURAL LEGISLATION ON WITNESS IMMUNITY IMPROVING

Abstract

One of the most important tasks of the state is to follow human rights within criminal proceedings. The implementation of this task is carried out, in particular, by improving the current legislation that is manifested in eliminating gaps, collisions, supplementing the current normative legal acts with norms in order to eliminate problems that arise within the law applying practice. Each participant in criminal proceedings has a unique legal status that determines his procedural rights and duties, which may include certain privileges. Thus, the legislator, aim-ing to preserve secrets protected by law, in order to follow the general principles of criminal proceedings, defined the categories of persons who cannot be interrogated as witnesses in criminal proceedings. Recently, this list was supplemented with a new category. The article substantiates that an expert, as a participant in criminal proceedings, is not granted witness immunity and his inclusion in this list will cause difficulties in law enforcement activities. Noting that the criminal procedural law has expanded the range of participants in crim-inal proceedings, the article highlights practical problems that may cause a violation of the fair balance between the need to keep certain information in secret and the public interest in the performing of the tasks of criminal proceedings. It is suggested to stipulate that a whis-tleblower cannot be a lawyer, in case of disclosing the lawyer's secret. This will serve as an additional guarantee of the right to protection. The need to improve the procedural form of the exemption from the obligation to keep professional secret is elucidated, in particular, it is proposed to provide the possibility of giving the person who entrusted such information the right to participate in the court hearings in video conference mode and to confirm the possi-bility of disclosing professional secrecy directly before the investigating judge. The position, under which an authorized person can, under certain circumstances, submit an application for exemption from the obligation to maintain professional secret has been criticized.