The benefit of doubt as a fundamental constitutional principle of the criminal procedure subordinates all of the bylaws within the scope of its influence to the Fundamental Law of Ukraine. However, various codified legislative acts of substantive and procedural law do not have juridical constructs which are consistent with the constitutional definition of the benefit of doubt in form and content. This misinterpretation leads to the loss of a correct understanding of this principle, thus opening the possibility of legal errors and sometimes even violations of law. Despite a great number of works focused on the study of various aspects of the benefit of doubt, it should be noted that juridical literature still has not developed a clear and well-established juridical consistency of the terminology used in legislative acts with Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

The purpose of this article is to highlight and analyze the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine (CCP of Ukraine) and the Criminal Code of Ukraine (CC of Ukraine) which are inconsistent with the benefit of doubt terminology as defined in the Constitution of Ukraine. Addressing the revealed shortcomings by suggesting that the relevant amendments should be considered to legislation of Ukraine and by introducing, at the methodological level, the practice where participants to criminal proceedings identically apply the terminology of the Ukrainian Constitution in procedural documents.

It is established that in the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine in respect of a person, who is prosecuted on criminal charges of committing an offense, some provisions use the terms “guilty” or “not guilty”, while other provisions use the concepts which sound alike [in Ukrainian] but have a different meaning – “innocent” and “not innocent”, and they are inconsistent with the legal construct of the benefit of doubt set out in Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine.

The author comes to the conclusion that these terminological inaccuracies ensue from the incorrect translation of the provisions of the Fundamentals of the Criminal Court Procedure of the USSR and the Union Republics adopted on December 25, 1958, and incorporation thereof to the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1960. The publication confirms the presence of such rudiments in the current CCP of Ukraine and CC of Ukraine. It is also noted that this issue is not only of theoretical importance, but also has practical implications, since parties to criminal proceedings use unconstitutional legal constructs in their law application practice.

Bibliography

Authored books

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Edited books

2. Busel V (holov red), Velykyi tlumachnyi slovnyk suchasnoii ukrainskoii movy [Great Explanatory Dictionary of Modern Ukrainian Language] (Uklad 2009) (in Ukrainian).

Journal articles

3. Fuley T, ‘Prezumptsiia nevynuvatosti: kontseptualni pidkhody’ [‘Presumption of Innocence: Conceptual Approaches’] (2012) 1 Slovo Natsionalnoii shkoly suddiv Ukrainy 41 (in Ukrainian).

4. Myroshnychenko T, ‘Realizatsiia zasady prezumptsiyi nevynuvatosti v protsesi kryminalnoho protsesualnoho dokazuvannia’ [‘Realization of the Basis of the Presumption of Innocence in the Process of Criminal procedural proof’] (2016) 40 Naukovyi visnyk Uzhhorodskoho natsionalnoho universytetu 119 (in Ukrainian).

5. Nor V, ‘Prezumptsiia nevynuvatosti yak konstytutsiina zasada kryminalnoho sudochynstva ta yiyi zastosuvannia v praktytsi Yevropeyskoho sudu z prav lyudyny’ [‘The Presumption of Innocence as the Constitutional Basis of Criminal Justice and its Application in the Practice of the European Court of Human Rights’] (2011) 1 Chasopys Natsionalnoho universytetu “Ostrozka akademiia” 3-4 (in Ukrainian).

6. Popelyushko V, ‘Prezumptsiia nevynuvatosti za zakonom, na hrani zakonu ta poza yoho mezhamy’ [‘Presumption of Innocence by Law, on the Verge of the Law and Beyond its Borders’] (2008) 1 Chasopys Akademiii advokatury Ukrainy 79 (in Ukrainian).

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