Appeal of report of suspicion during the pre-trial investigation

One of the most important criminal procedural decisions is the notice of suspicion which is essential both for the criminal proceeding as a whole and for the person to whom this message is made. Therefore, compliance with the legality and validity of the notice of suspicion is important in the general mechanism of effective solution of the tasks of criminal proceedings, in particular, regarding appealing the notice of suspicion during the pre-trial detention investigation. On bases of the case-law analysis, a number of issues have been highlighted in connection with the appeal of report of suspicion during the pre-trial investigation. The purpose of the article is to cover the gaps and conflicts of the current criminal procedural legislation in the regulation of appealing the report of suspicion during the pre-trial investigation. The authors summarized the case law on consideration of complaints about suspected reports during the pre-trial investigation, which allowed to identify 3 variants of interpretation by the investigating judges of the «suspicion report» as a subject of appeal: 1. the subject of the appeal is only the procedure for the report of suspicion; 2. the subject of the appeal is only the report of suspicion as a procedural decision; 3. The subject of the appeal is the written report of suspicion as a procedural decision and the procedure for the implementation of the report of suspicion. It is justified that the third approach is correct. The authors support the view of the complex nature of the notion of suspicion. Particular attention is paid to the issue of challenging the validity of the suspicion report. In the article the practice of investigating judges who refuse to open proceedings on a complaint about the validity of a suspected report is evaluated critically. On the basis of the practice of ECtHR, the authors conclude that the validity of a suspicion report may be may be the subject of an appeal during the pre-trial investigation in view of the insufficiency of the evidence on which it is based. In addition, it is concluded that the appeal of the suspicion report is ineffective after two months from the bottom of the report of the suspected in crime and one month after the report of the suspected in offense. On the basis of the conducted research, the authors proposed to amend the current CPC in order to improve the regulatory framework for appealing the suspected report during the pre-trial investigation.