How the “discretionary powers” ​​of the investigator violate the principles of adversarialism and equality of arms


Sample job description for an investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

General provisions

  1. An investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is hired in accordance with the established procedure, by order of the head of the relevant department.
  2. The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports to the head of the investigative unit.
  3. An investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs undergoes regular re-certification in the manner prescribed in the relevant documentation.
  4. The work schedule of an investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is determined on the basis of internal documents of the unit.
  5. A person applying for this position must meet the following requirements:
      legal education;
  6. successfully passed the medical examination and professional selection;
  7. availability of a set of necessary documents.
  8. The procedure for replacing an investigator in the event of his absence (illness, business trip, etc.) is determined by the head of the investigative unit based on current regulations.
  9. The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is obliged to understand the following issues:
      current legal framework governing investigative activities;
  10. principles of interaction with other representatives of law enforcement agencies;
  11. the order of subordination and hierarchy of the relevant units;
  12. principles of maintaining the necessary document flow;
  13. theoretical foundations of criminology, criminology, jurisprudence;
  14. methods of working with witnesses, victims, suspects and other persons;
  15. principles of classification of various types of illegal actions;
  16. methods of applying advanced achievements of criminology;
  17. parameters for using relevant technology and equipment;
  18. algorithms for investigating illegal actions;
  19. principles of examination and processing of the results obtained;
  20. rules for conducting an inspection of the scene of an incident;
  21. principles of working with photographic images;
  22. rules for documenting the results obtained;
  23. norms and tactics of interrogation;
  24. algorithms for conducting investigative actions, the need for which was identified during investigations;
  25. standards of ethics for law enforcement officials;
  26. rules for working with office equipment and specialized software;
  27. labor discipline standards, labor protection and fire safety rules.
  28. The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is guided by:
      the current regulatory framework;
  29. relevant documentation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs;
  30. internal documentation of the department;
  31. the contents of this manual.

Responsibilities

The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is assigned the following functions:

  1. Interaction with other law enforcement officials on issues of their professional activities.
  2. Ensuring the safety of data obtained during the investigation.
  3. Planning and carrying out the necessary investigative activities.
  4. Detection of motives and circumstances significant for the investigation of offenses.
  5. Issuing instructions for conducting examinations and other investigative actions.
  6. Preparation and submission of requests to the appropriate authorities, within their competence.
  7. Drawing up protocols, plans, diagrams and other investigative documents.
  8. Taking measures to identify those responsible for criminal acts.
  9. Conducting interviews with witnesses and victims and examining the scene of the incident.
  10. Formation of the evidence base necessary to bring charges.
  11. Referral of cases for filing charges.
  12. Resumption of the investigation when new significant circumstances are identified.
  13. Closing cases if there are sufficient grounds for this.
  14. Ensuring the rights guaranteed by current legislation to persons participating in a criminal investigation.
  15. Participation in the activities of investigative groups, within the boundaries of established responsibility.
  16. Ensuring the maintenance and preservation of necessary documentation.
  17. Compliance with labor discipline standards and fire safety rules.

Responsibility

The investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is responsible in the following situations:

  1. For disclosure of confidential information - in the manner prescribed in the articles of the relevant legislation.
  2. For failure to fulfill their professional functions - within the limits given in the documentation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and relevant legal acts.
  3. For violations of regulations and legislative acts - in accordance with the provisions of administrative, labor, and criminal law.
  4. In other cases provided for by the rules of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and current legislation.

Rights

An investigator of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has the following set of rights:

  1. Sign documents within your competence.
  2. Initiate cases in the order specified in the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
  3. Accept criminal cases for production and transfer in accordance with the established procedure.
  4. Direct investigations into pending cases.
  5. Carry out the necessary investigative actions within the boundaries determined by the Code of Criminal Procedure.
  6. Obtain court decisions and necessary consents from the heads of relevant departments.
  7. Give instructions to the inquiry authorities to carry out investigative measures necessary for the investigation.
  8. In accordance with the established procedure, appeal the actions of the prosecutor's office to cancel decisions to initiate criminal cases.
  9. Apply other rights specified in the Code of Criminal Procedure and relevant legislation.

Official website of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation studied the case of a Muscovite convicted of drug trafficking and forgery of documents. In her cassation appeal, the accused, among other arguments, pointed out that the testimony of operational officers cannot be considered admissible evidence.

The highest authority considered that there were grounds to change the court decisions.

Position of the Armed Forces

In support of its conclusion about the guilt of the accused, the court referred in its verdict to the interrogation as a witness of a police officer who conducted a personal search of the detainee. According to the police officer’s testimony, during these actions the accused told her that the package she found containing a grayish-green substance contained heroin, which she took as a bookmark and was supposed to give to her friend.

“At the same time, within the meaning of the law, a police officer can be questioned in court only on the circumstances of one or another investigative or procedural action when deciding on the admissibility of evidence, and not for the purpose of clarifying the content of the testimony of the interrogated person. Therefore, the testimony of this category of witnesses regarding information that they became aware of from their conversations or during the interrogation of the suspect (accused), witness, cannot be used as evidence of the guilt of the defendant,” notes the Supreme Court.

In this regard, the court does not have the right to interrogate the inquirer or investigator, as well as the employee carrying out operational support of the case, about the content of the testimony given during pre-trial proceedings by the suspect or accused and to restore the content of this testimony, contrary to the rule enshrined in Article 75 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, according to which The testimony of a suspect or accused, given during pre-trial proceedings in a criminal case in the absence of a defense lawyer and not confirmed by him in court, is considered inadmissible evidence, the highest authority emphasizes.

“Thereby, the law excludes the possibility of any direct or indirect use of the information contained therein,” the Supreme Court reminds.

Thus, in this case, information that became known to her from the detainee’s explanations about the circumstances of her crime must be excluded from the testimony of the operative officer’s witness.

Meanwhile, having analyzed the testimony of another policeman, the court saw no reason to consider them inadmissible evidence. The Supreme Court explained that the employee was interrogated on the circumstances of the contact of a witness to the police who voluntarily gave up a narcotic drug, the conduct of procedural actions against this witness, as well as the preparation and conduct of an “operational experiment.”

Moreover, the fact that this particular policeman did not participate in the arrest, search and interrogation of the convicted woman does not constitute a basis for excluding his testimony from admissible evidence, as erroneously stated in the complaint, the Supreme Court explains.

Forced labor

In addition, the Moscow City Court, considering the case on appeal, came to the conclusion that the court incorrectly sentenced the defendant to 6 months of imprisonment for falsifying documents and commuted her sentence in this part, replacing imprisonment with forced labor.

However, the Supreme Court did not agree with this approach, recalling that in accordance with the legal position of the Plenum, in cases where, due to the requirements of the law, a convicted person cannot be sentenced to imprisonment (Part 1 of Article 56 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), forced labor is not applied (clause 22 of the resolution of December 22, 2015 No. 58).

“Taking into account the interconnected provisions of parts 1 and 2 of Article 53.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, forced labor is applied exclusively as an alternative to imprisonment, and first a sentence of imprisonment must be imposed, and then, only as a replacement for imprisonment, forced labor is applied.

Based on this, within the meaning of the law, when assigning punishment, forced labor specified in the sanctions of the articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is not taken into account by the court at the stage of choosing the main punishment from the types of punishment available in the sanctions. In these cases, the court must first come to the conclusion that it is necessary to impose the most severe punishment on the convicted person in the form of imprisonment (without taking into account forced labor), and after that, having discussed the issue of the possibility of correcting the convicted person without actually serving the sentence in prison, make a decision on replacing the convicted person's sentence of imprisonment with forced labor.

In such circumstances, when imposing a punishment, taking into account the peculiarities of the legal nature of forced labor, despite their presence in the sanctions of the articles of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the use of this type of punishment is not provided for in replacement of the imprisonment imposed by the court by the criminal law,” explains the Supreme Court.

As a result, the Supreme Court changed the sentence and not only excluded from it the reference to the police officer’s testimony, but also commuted the sentence from 8 to 7 years and 10 months of imprisonment.

Alice Fox

Document composition options

The procedure for developing instructions for its employees is defined in Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs dated February 1, 2018 No. 50. Section IX, paragraphs 174-184, contains the main characteristics that the instructions for employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs must comply with. According to these points, the document must include 4 mandatory parts:

  • General provisions.
  • Job responsibilities.
  • Responsibility of the investigator.
  • Employee rights.

Basic requirements for the content of these sections are also specified in this regulatory act. Any instructions used in the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs must be drawn up taking into account the provisions of this Order and the relevant sections of the Federal Law “On Police”.

General provisions

This section contains a description of the basic parameters of the employee’s activities. It must contain:

  • List of norms regulating its activities.
  • Temporary replacement procedure.
  • Activity schedule data.
  • Other data included at the discretion of department management.

Attention! Since the volume of the section is not always able to accommodate the list of characteristics, it can refer to the relevant internal documents available to the employee (duty schedule, etc.).

Responsibilities

This part contains a comprehensive list of the employee's job functions. In some departments they may differ, depending on their regional and profile characteristics, but the main part remains unchanged. Registered:

  • Basic functions required for the investigator position.
  • Auxiliary, mainly related to document processing.
  • Basic, mandatory for all professions: comply with labor discipline, fire safety, etc.

Attention! When writing this section, you can focus on professional standard 09.001, which describes the characteristics of a forensic investigator. It was approved by the Ministry of Labor on April 7, 2015.

Responsibility

The section lists cases when a specialist can be held accountable. It can be administrative, disciplinary and, in some cases, criminal in nature. Since the degree of punishment and the degree of guilt of the employee are determined in the process of administrative and judicial proceedings, their detailed consideration with all the nuances is beyond the scope of the instructions. This results in a section that is small in size and has a general format.

Rights

The rights of the investigator are based on the articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure, primarily on Article 38. They indicate the boundaries of his official powers and capabilities. In addition to them, the investigator has the rights guaranteed to all employees in Article 21 of the Labor Code.

Job descriptions are approved based on a certain standard:

  • Drawing up the initial draft.
  • Its review by the department's management and human resources specialist.
  • Making the necessary corrections.
  • Printing out the final version, taking into account office work standards.
  • Collection of signatures of persons with whom the instructions were agreed upon.
  • Endorsement of the final version by the head of the department.

After approval of the instructions is completed, the employee himself gets acquainted with it. This happens in the presence of the immediate supervisor; the employee must sign, agreeing with the contents of the document.

Attention! Clause 183 of Section IX of the Order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs dated February 1, 2018 No. 50 contains instructions for drawing up a job description in two copies. One of them is transferred to the employee, the other remains in the corresponding unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

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