In the article, the authors investigate the issue of incorrect application and abuse of the practice of the ECHR in criminal proceedings. It is indicated that Art. 9 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine, which provides for the obligation to conduct criminal proceedings taking into account the practice of the ECHR, is generally implemented in criminal proceedings. At the same time, the application of irrelevant decisions of the ECHR or the abuse of relevant practice to achieve a positive result in criminal proceedings has become a relatively standard practice.

The purpose of the article is to analyze incorrect practices of applying the decisions of the ECHR in the national and international judicial systems, as well as to formulate their own proposals on possible ways to solve this problem.

The authors note that it is the court that is obliged to verify the relevant practice of the ECHR, assess the circumstances and facts of a specific criminal proceeding and apply the relevant decision of the ECHR. If the interpretation of the ECHR was used in a court decision, then other law enforcement officers, looking for relevant case law in the ECHR, will familiarize themselves with and, accordingly, use not the original decision of the ECHR, but the interpretation that was madeby the national court. Therefore, it is the court that bears the burden of responsibility for the correct application of the practice of the ECHR.

Also, scientists draw attention to the importance of determining the participant in the criminal proceedings who initiated the reference to the decision of the ECHR. If a party to the criminal proceedings, even abusing its right, refers to a relatively irrelevant position of the ECHR, but proves the need for its application in this particular case, then a standard adversarial process occurs. The situation is completely different when the court itself refers to the interpretations that were provided by the ECHR in the decision. In such a case, the burden of proving the relevance of the position of the ECHR falls on the court, because this happens on its initiative. Accordingly, when assessing the correctness of the application of the practice of the ECHR, the subject who initiated the use of the relevant practice in the criminal process is of great importance.

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