The dissertation is comprehensively studied procedural guarantees of impartiality of professional participants in criminal proceedings, during which new results were obtained in the form of scientific conclusions aimed at solving theoretical and practical issues that make up the content of the issues raised.
The choice of the research topic is determined by its relevance for the science of criminal procedure and law enforcement practice, as there are a number of debatable or unresolved issues, both doctrinal and purely applied, related to regulatory independence, objectivity and neutrality of professional participants in criminal proceedings.
The starting point for revealing the general theoretical foundations of legislative regulation of procedural guarantees of impartiality of professional participants in criminal proceedings was the analysis of legal positions formulated in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and the Supreme Court.
The dissertation defines the concept and reveals the nature of the category «impartiality». In a general sense, the term «impartiality» in criminal proceedings implies a state of affairs in which its professional participant is deprived of personal attitude to this process and its participants and acts competently as an independent, separate subject of criminal proceedings, without expressing direct or indirect negative and/or favorable attitude to criminal proceedings in general and its other participants. The content of the outlined concept consists of: a) independence; b) neutrality; c) objectivity and d) competence of professional participants in criminal proceedings.
It is emphasized that the absence of all four components is not required to determine bias; it is sufficient to establish the absence of one of them. In other words, the ratio may be different: impartiality due to neutrality, objectivity, independence, competence, etc., but in each case, the establishment of the absence of at least one of these guarantees results in the bias of a professional participant in criminal proceedings.
The author proposes that the independence of professional participants in criminal proceedings should be considered as a state of internal conviction and procedural regime due to a combination of organizational, procedural, material, personal (moral) factors, enabling independent, without outside influence, realization of their rights and responsibilities in accordance with the functional orientation in order to solve the problems of criminal proceedings.
It is substantiated that professional participants in criminal proceedings are subjects of criminal procedural legal relations, on which criminal procedural legislation entrusts functions determined by their profession, professional education and/or knowledge aimed at solving the problems of criminal proceedings. The circle of professional participants in criminal proceedings includes: judge, investigating judge, prosecutor, head of the pre-trial investigation body, head of the inquiry body, investigator, interrogator, defense counsel, lawyer, expert, specialist, translator.
The dissertation describes the international standards of impartiality of each professional participant in criminal proceedings (judges, prosecutors, investigators, interrogators, defenders, representatives, experts, specialists, translators), based on the proposed division into four groups, in particular, international standards of independence, neutrality, objectivity, and competence.
Considerable attention in the dissertation is paid to the analysis of procedural guarantees of impartiality of professional participants in criminal proceedings. Systematization of doctrinal approaches to their classification allowed to propose its addition by such criteria as: 1) the source of legal regulation; 2) depending on the procedural status of professional participants in criminal proceedings; 3) according to the hierarchy of legal and regulatory framework; 4) by functional orientation; 5) for the subject of ensuring the implementation of these guarantees; 6) depending on the stage and procedure of criminal proceedings; 7) on the legal consequences of their violation (legal liability).
