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Anna Stavitskaya, lawyer of the Moscow Bar Association
Do we need a jury trial? I am a practicing attorney and I have repeatedly participated in jury trials.
From the point of view of progressive lawyers, I can say that, of course, jury trials are needed.
Lawyers consider it to be a salvation for them, because we all know what the justice we have is, and convictions are much more common than acquittals in the ordinary courts, and only in a jury trial can lawyers get justice.
This court fully complies with the adversarial principle.
Now defamation of jury trials is beginning on the part of the judiciary and the government.
As is known, there is now a tendency for many articles of the Criminal Code to be removed from the jurisdiction of jury trials.
This is a sufficiently large range of articles, in particular, for example, treason.
Here are the arguments used by the people that remove from the jurisdiction of the jury trials articles of the Criminal Code:
it is an expensive court, the common people, as they are called, "ordinary people", cannot understand the intricacies of the criminal process, and generally justice should be done by a professional judge who understands what is going on in the court and may make an objective decision.
I think, first, that this court is not very expensive. Moreover, some legal qualifications and legal knowledge are already implemented by a judge.
The jury must only answer the question as to whether the accused is guilty or not guilty.
And understanding of this is easy for any person who will participate in a trial by jury. Therefore, this argument, in my opinion, too, does not suit.
It is impossible to come to a jury trial with a poorly-investigated case and with a bad position of the prosecution.
There should be clear evidence, and there is a need for good work of the prosecutor if they want to get a guilty verdict.
The prosecution and investigation services have got used to the fact that the court does exactly what they want,
and so this bond leads to the fact that they are badly represented in a jury trial and want to abolish it.
Boris Panteleyev, expert of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Director of Legal Information Agency "Man and Law"
There are executive, legislative and judicial branches of power. The first two authorities, as you know, are actively using the source of legitimacy in voters in the nation.
They even re-established gubernatorial elections. Now we have a mayoral election held in public.
This is a confirmation of the legitimacy of power, the ability to solve large and serious issues, etc.
According to the Constitution, the judiciary should also rely on the people, and the people have the right to administer justice in one form or another.
As for the quality of the "human material", which comes to the court to determine the fate of other people - this is a complex issue, it's not that simple.
First, we have a jury trial itself not introduced widely throughout the Russian Federation, it was introduced in stages, first as an experiment, and then with exceptions.
In the North Caucasus republics it has not existed for a long time, and it was a serious problem, and in fact it still remains serious.
On all key issues that take place there, jury trials in such an open and democratic regime are hardly possible there in principle.
We have to move the cases to other regions. In principle, the level of confidence in jury trials is being reduced.
The real problem is not the point. The level of confidence in the court at all is being reduced.
Today we have aggression and the idea of mob violence sweeping the masses. You know that there are entire villages, towns, such as Sagra, where this is like people's heroism, folklore.
A jury trial today is a very important tool, it is the constitutional legitimacy of the judiciary itself.
Lists of jurors are based on the electoral roll.
If our country trusts these people to elect the president, mayor, governor, why are they told that they need to be discriminated in their right to administer justice?
This approach is unconstitutional.