It has been established that the legislative requirement to conduct forensic, forensic medical and forensic psychiatric examinations exclusively in state specialized institutions is not justified, since there is no scientific definition of the essence and features of forensic examinations, their list in regulatory acts is arbitrarily changed by administrative means. The necessity of supplementing the criminal procedural legislation with norms regarding the conduct of additional, repeated, commission and complex examinations is argued. A distinction was made and the grounds for the appointment of additional and repeated examinations were established. It has been proven that complex expertise has two main legal features: the participation of at least two experts from different fields (areas of the same field) of special knowledge; formulating a joint conclusion based on research conducted by each expert.
It is well-founded that an expert who conducted an examination during a pre-trial investigation or a specialist is involved in a court proceeding to investigate the circumstances of a criminal case, the establishment of which requires the use of special knowledge, after which they may be assigned to conduct an examination. The specialist can be present during the expert proceedings (observation of the actions of the expert), assessment of the expert's opinion (establishment of the scientific justification of the results of the examination).
The concept of biological samples for examination is formulated, as objects that reflect the internal and external individual properties of a person as a biological being, do not depend on his will and are divided into three groups: a) parts of the human body (hair, nails, skin, bones, etc. .); b) human discharge (blood, urine, sweat, semen, odor, etc.); c) impressions of the relief of the skin of the human body (fingers, palms, lips, forehead, ears, feet, etc.).
A procedure for forced collection of biological samples is proposed, which is carried out after a person's written refusal to voluntarily provide samples; issuance of a court order regarding forced collection of biological samples; sample selection by an expert (forensic medical expert) or a specialist (doctor) with the involvement of units provided for in Art. 143 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, in the presence of witnesses, as well as a defender, representative, legal representative or lawyer at their request.
It is proved that the assessment of the expert's opinion is divided into two stages. At the first stage, an isolated assessment of the expert's opinion as a source of evidence is carried out (determination of admissibility, propriety, authenticity of the established fact), at the second stage, the connection of the fact with other evidence in the case and its significance for proving the circumstances of the criminal offense is clarified. In the assessment of the expert's opinion, the subjects (court, parties, other expert, specialist), subject (characteristics of the expert's opinion), results (unequivocal, probable, doubtful), grounds (criteria) of the assessment are distinguished.
It has been proven that the judge is not able to objectively evaluate the scientific validity of the expert's conclusions, the correctness of the choice and application of research methods, the correspondence of these methods to the modern achievements of a certain expert field, since for such an assessment it is necessary to have the expert's special knowledge. It is proposed to use the help of a disinterested specialist in providing explanations for making procedural and organizational-tactical decisions by the court.
It was found that the admissibility of the expert's opinion is determined not only by the procedural form of the examination procedure, but also by the content of the document. Procedural violations, which are the grounds for declaring the conclusion inadmissible, are classified according to two criteria - according to the stages of the examination (committed at the initial, working, final stages) and the severity of the consequences (substantial violations, including significant violations that cannot be eliminated and cause unconditional recognition the expert's opinion is inadmissible; conditional violations that can be eliminated by conducting procedural actions; non-essential violations that formally violate procedural requirements, but do not require elimination).
It was determined that prior to the simultaneous questioning of experts who have provided conclusions in which there are disagreements concerning the same subject and objects of research, it is necessary to conduct an individual questioning of each expert, and their order should coincide with the sequence of the conducted examinations. In the same order, questions are put to experts during a simultaneous interrogation, in which experts have the right to ask questions to each other.
