THE QUESTION OF FINAL JUDGMENT ON THE CRIMINAL CASE AGAINST THE DECEASED

The relevance of this paper is caused by the gaps in legal regulation of the arrangements for criminal proceedings within the conditions of the death of a defendant. The object of the study is the forms of final judgments taken by the court in a criminal case against a deceased defendant. The research is based on the position of the Russian Federation Constitutional Court expressed in its Resolution of the 14th of July 2011 No. 16-P “On the case of verification of the constitutionality of the provisions of paragraph 4 of the first part of Article 24 and paragraph 1 of Article 254 of the Russian Federation Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with the complaints of citizens S.I. Aleksandrin and Yu.F. Vashchenko”. The paper considers the essence of the acquittal and conviction judgments as a final judicial decision resolving the question of a defendant's guilt. The authors pay special attention to the essence of the decision about the criminal case termination as the final judicial act, as well as to the conditions for its pronunciation based on the non-exonerating grounds. The possibility of rendering a judgment by the court on a criminal case against the deceased or a decision on termination of a criminal case is considered in terms of the principle of the presumption of innocence. According to the results of the study, the authors make the conclusion that when establishing the deceased defendant’s guilt during a criminal trial, a conviction judgment without a punishment should be rendered, since the danger of a deceased person to the public is being lost with his or her death, and the application of a punishment to the deceased becomes impossible. However, no confirmation of guilt of the deceased during the trial indicates the necessity to deliver an acquittal judgment.