CONCERNING THE INTERRELATION OF THE DEFENDANT’S RIGHT TO HAVE COMPETENT LEGAL ASSISTANCE AND THE RIGHT OF DEFENSE

This paper considers the defendant’s right of defense in its interrelation with the constitutional right to have competent legal assistance. The author substantiates the thesis that the participation of a defense lawyer in criminal procedure is intended to compensate the procedural disparity of the defense party against the opportunities of the prosecution party in respect of the growing complicacy of the criminal procedural form. It is displayed that, as a rule, the defendant does not have knowledge and skills to countervail the prosecution. Moreover, the author pays attention to the fact that the RF Constitution guarantees every person the right to have competent legal assistance irrespective of his or her formal status within the criminal procedure. Given this, the task of reinterpretation of the advocacy role in criminal procedure is substantiated. As the current Russian Federation Code of Criminal Procedure proposed the defense of person’s rights and freedoms as the only purpose of criminal procedure, the activity of any and all official participants of criminal procedure (interrogator, crime investigator, prosecutor, court) should deal with the defense of the rights and freedoms of a person, first of all, of a complainant, suspect, and defendant not to commit the violations of the rights. In light of this, the paper considers the defense lawyer’s activity as the activity focused on the serving the interests of justice – when detecting the violations on the part of the investigation bodies and the court, appealing against the actions of the official participants of legal proceedings, struggling for the restoration of violated rights, the defense lawyer works for the improvement of quality of the criminal procedure activity in the whole. Thereout, the public function of a defense lawyer is derived. Following the results of the study carried out in the paper, the author makes the conclusion that the right to have competent legal assistance is the essential guarantee of the enforcement of the right for defense. The limitation of the right to have competent legal assistance affects negatively both the effectiveness of the criminal procedure in the whole and the state of the personality legal defense in particular.