Marchenko O. Procedural Order of Releasing from Criminal Responsibility

The dissertation is an independent completed scientific work which analyzes the procedural order for releasing from criminal responsibility. There is proposed, for the first time, to consider the institute of releasing from criminal responsibility as a socio-legal phenomenon which is the result of long enough theoretical discussions, law enforcement experience, constant reformation and improvement of legislation, the effectiveness of which provides for the harmonization of legal provisions, the clarifying of systematization and emphasizing of a certain set of procedural norms, in which the features of different types of release would be reproduced. There was proved the importance of the procedural component in the notion of releasing from criminal responsibility, reproduced in such features (other than the settlement of the norms of the CPC) - the refusal of the state to condemn the person who lost the former social danger; refusal to apply coercive measures of criminal law and criminal procedure to him/her; realization of the release on the basis of a court decision on the closure of criminal proceedings and the release of a suspect (accused) from criminal responsibility. It is proposed to consider the "procedural order for releasing from criminal responsibility" as a kind of systemic set of legal norms aimed at the implementation of the grounds for releasing from criminal responsibility defined in the Criminal Code; in which the sequence of actions (stages) of a criminal proceeding is defined (regulated); the boundaries of the pre-trial investigation and its minimum possible volume are determined; procedural status of subjects of criminal-procedural relations as to the implementation of releasing from criminal responsibility; requirements to the content and form of decisions taken at various stages of the institution's implementation of the principle of releasing from criminal responsibility. The necessity of the legislative definition of different procedural orders for the application of releasing from criminal responsibility using some compulsory measures and releasing from punishment with the use of compulsory educational measures is substantiated, which will contribute to the delimitation of their legal nature, understanding and law interpretation applying.