Concerning the criminal procedural functions of a prosecutor

The paper presents a critical overview of a prosecutor’s status in the criminal procedure with regard to the criminal procedural functions assigned to him in part 1 of Art. 37 of the Russian Federation Code of Criminal Procedure. The relevance of the study is caused by the absence in the law of a definite indication of tasks and objectives entrusted on a prosecutor during the pre-trial and trial procedure at his simultaneous attributing to the prosecution, the goal of which is to ensure criminal proceedings. The contradictions and gaps in the enshrining prosecutor’s functions and authorities in the law led to the uncertainty of the prosecutor’s procedural status, which is the most dually manifested within the pre-trial proceedings, when, a prosecutor as a prosecution party, on the one hand, implements the criminal prosecution function, and, on the other hand, carries out the function of procedural oversight over the preliminary investigation bodies. After the semantic analysis of the term of “criminal prosecution”, having analyzed the ideas, opinions, and proposals presented in the criminal procedural science, as well as taking into account the logics of the law manifested at the regulation of the powers of the bodies of preliminary investigation into criminal prosecution, the author justifies the necessity of statutory division of the prosecutor’s functions and delimitation of borders for their implementation taking into account the criminal procedure parts. In the pre-trial proceedings, the prosecutor should be assigned only the procedural oversight function, and in the judicial proceedings – the criminal prosecution function. As a result, the main goal of the prosecutor during the pre-trial proceedings is to ensure the lawfulness when the preliminary investigation bodies implement their procedural authorities, and during trial proceedings – to carry out criminal prosecution in the name of the Russian Federation.