Criminal Procedural and Criminalistic Aspects of the Examination of Evidence in a Jury Trial

The provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law regulating the procedure for the presentation of evidence by the parties to the jury in a criminal case, the differences in the procedure for the examination of evidence by a professional judge and jury members are considered. On the basis of considering the points of view of other authors on this problem, analyzing the provisions of the theory of evidence, studying the existing judicial and investigative practice, the authors come to the conclusion that there is a deviation in this issue.

It is suggested that participants empowered to make important judicial decisions, such as verdicts and sentences, addressing the basic issues of the provenance of the crime, the involvement of the accused and his guilt, i. e. professional judges and jurors, should be given equal opportunities to perceive the information (evidence) presented by the parties during the course of the judicial investigation.
However, that is far from the case. Jury members receive information only by hearing, often without the ability to perceive visually or in other ways as professional judges. Some researchers of this issue propose to compensate for this inequality by talking about the introduction of elements of visibility into judicial proceedings, that is, derived materials obtained by some processing of the documents in the case in order to more fully perceive the main, key points. The authors evaluate the proposals put forward and introduce the limit of admissibility in court proceedings of such actions.