The Main Signs of the Duality of the Specialist Position in Criminal Proceedings

The author examines the problem of the special knowledge functioning in criminal proceedings. By synchronizing the institutions of the criminal procedure that regulate the legal relationship between the knowledgeable persons and the institution of criminal law regulating the responsibility of these participants in the commission of a crime against justice, the author demonstartes asymmetry between the rights and duties of a specialist. The subject of the study is constituted by the contradictions between the institutions of procedural and substantive law, namely, the discrepancy between the procedural complex (rights, duties, functions) of a specialist to the course of his criminal responsibility. For this purpose, a comparison is made between the rights and obligations of knowledgeable persons, based on the criteria of: a) the scope of procedural functions; b) the specificity of procedural rights and obligations; c) actual forms of special knowledge acceptable as evidence. On the basis of the revealed contradictions, the situation of competitiveness of special knowledge is investigated; the legal significance of the forms of special knowledge is determined. The author proposes a systematic solution, namely: 1) to clarify the procedural status of a specialist: to add the definition of “forensic specialist” to Art. 58, 61, 71, 74, 80, part 4 of Art. 164, art. 168, 251, 270, 271 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation; 2) to clarify the epistemological aspects of the research functions of a specialist in accordance with Part 3.1 of Art. 74, art. 80; Part 1.2 of Art. 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation; 3) to establish a mechanism for the responsibility of a specialist for giving a deliberately false opinion: to add to Art. 58 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, part 5 by analogy with part 5 of Art. 57 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation; to supplement the text of Part 1 of Art. 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation; to correct the content of Art. 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Or release the specialist from criminal liability for the opinion expressed by him (even if it is deliberately false). The author proves that the proposed measures will promote adversarial evidence, increase the specialist’s subjective responsibility for the conclusion given by him, which corresponds to the institution of proving.

The main research methods are: general scientific methods, review and analysis of legislative sources, contextual method, semantic analysis and formal logical analysis.

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