Activists demand mechanism to correct judicial mistakes in life-termer cases
The human rights activists and relatives of life-term prisoners held a rally near the Ukraine’s Parliament demanding that MPs adopt the bill No. 2033a.
As the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent reports, the adoption of this document will put into force the mechanism that allows correcting judicial mistakes in cases of life-termers.
The protesters showed the performance, acting out a court hearing of the future, where the court acquits an accused because the conviction is based on distorted facts, and the right to defense of the suspect has been violated.
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“Since 2010, when the so-called ‘little judicial reform’ was conducted, the Supreme Court has been deprived of the authority to reconsider the criminal case. Since that time, Ukraine lacks any legal procedure, there is no way to correct mistakes of justice,” human rights activist of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group Andriy Didenko explained.
According to him, the Kharkiv Human Rights Group is aware of ten stories of the life-termers, whose indictment is based solely on the evidence beaten out under torture, which they later denied in court.
“These life-termers are Oleksandr Rafalsky, Volodymyr Panasenko, Maksym Orlov, Merab Suslov and many others,” Andriy Didenko said.
The bill proposes to allow reconsidering the cases of those, who were sentenced for life under the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1960, if the prisoners believe the court made mistake.
“However, reconsideration is possible only under certain criteria – if the evidence, which the charges are based on, were obtained by illegal means; if the verdict does not correspond to the case files; if a person had been first questioned as a witness, and then was accused and convicted,” Andriy Didenko pointed out.
The life-termers will be able to send their complaints to the courts of appeal only until December 31, 2017.
“The courts will reconsider the cases solely under the Code of 1960, which contains a lot of drawbacks. The new Code of Criminal Procedure was inter alia adopted to correct the gaps,” he said.
The bill was initiated by MPs Oksana Syroyid, Viktor Chumak, Olena Sotnyk, Hanna Hopko, Leonid Yemets and Ivan Krulko.
As known, the petition was registered on the website of the President of Ukraine calling for introduction of special legal mechanism to reconsider sentences in criminal cases under which people were convicted without proper evidence and are still serving their sentences.
“The causes of violations of right to lawful sentence were different, including accusatory court, persecution of persons for political, economic or other reasons, performance race of the law enforcement bodies. Such cases have one common feature – the charge is based on the testimony of the defendant, codefendant or witness received during torture, inhuman treatment or psychological pressure of the investigation, denied by such persons in the court,” author of the petition, Tetiana Panasenko, wrote.
As of October 6, the petition was signed by over 1,260 people. The President of Ukraine considers an e-petition, which gains at least 25,000 signatures within three months upon the date of publication.
According to the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, 1,524 people served a life sentence in Ukraine as of September 1, 2015.
