Violation of the presumption of innocence in administrative legislation: problems of evaluation of evidence

The analysis of the legal regulation of the evaluation of evidence in administrative legislation, as well as the practice of its application in the administrative and jurisdictional process leads to the conclusion about its imperfection. For this reason, the principle of presumption of innocence does not always serve as a guarantee of protection of rights and legitimate interests of citizens brought to administrative responsibility. Frequently, judges and bodies of relevant jurisdiction, considering cases on administrative offenses, evaluate evidence at their discretion, ignoring the meaning of the said principle - to compensate for the difference of knowledge of the right of the accusing and accused parties. This leads to legal liability of citizens for unproven unlawful facts. The circumstance causing the relevance of the raised issue is the complexity of the implementation of the principle of presumption of innocence in administrative-jurisdictional process, associated with the order of evaluation of evidence on the basis of the norms of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offences. Attention is drawn to the imperfection of administrative legislation in terms of the procedure for evaluating evidence and the need for amendments and additions to the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, by legislating the definitions of “criterion of evidence” (relevance, admissibility, sufficiency and reliability) and “criterion for evaluating evidence”.