The dissertation is the first in Ukraine complex research of the criminal-legal characteristic of encroachment on the defender or the representative of the person.
For the first time, the need to change the title of Section XVIII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of Ukraine was argued and the following wording was proposed: “Criminal offenses against activities related to the administration of justice or rights defending activities.”
Based on positive foreign experience, given that the motive for the crime may be due not only to lawful (lawful) activities of the victim but also illegal, dissatisfaction with such lawful activities, revenge for such lawful activities, as well as the past, present or future legal activities of the victim, it is proposed to supplement Part 1 of Art. 398, part 2 of Art. 398, part 3 of Art. 398, part 1 of Art. 400 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine after the words “related to the provision of legal assistance” with the words “for the termination or change of the nature of such activities or for reasons of revenge.”
In addition, for the first time, the provisions of the Criminal Code of foreign countries to the Romano-Germanic legal family on the criminalization of encroachments on a lawyer or representative of a person were systematized, which showed the existence of three main approaches to the criminalization of such acts, namely 1) criminalization at the level of a separate article; 2) criminalization of an act of encroachment on a defense counsel or a person’s representative in the same article with other participants in the trial (lawyer, prosecutor, expert, translator or witness during the trial, in order to change the course of the trial, etc.); 3) criminalization of an act of encroachment on a defense counsel or a person’s representative by forming another criminal offense as a qualifying feature.
The proposal to change the name of Art. 400 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for “premeditated murder or attempted murder of a person carrying out human rights activities”; approaches to defining the specific object of encroachment as a procedure for carrying out human rights activities by a person providing legal assistance, protection of personal, property rights and interests of the person carrying out such activities and his close relatives.
The development of criminal law on encroachment on a lawyer or a representative of a person in the twentieth century was progressive. As these norms are inextricably linked with the development of the legal profession, full- fledged criminal protection of lawyers was developed only at the turn of the second millennium with growing concern for life and health of lawyers and legal representatives. The latest stage in the development of such norms in Ukraine began with the collapse of the bipolar system in the world and the transition of the state from a totalitarian to a democratic regime, which led to a change in the state’s value system and criminal protection of the defender.
