The need to deposit witness and victims evidence in complex criminal cases

Introduction: the authors analyzed the criminal procedural legislation of a number of foreign countries, governing the deposit of evidence and current rules of criminal procedure, which allows reading out the testimony of participants in the process in court. The article highlights some issues of the institution of judicial deposition of testimony and second hand evidence. Materials and Methods: the methodological basis of the study was the dialectical method of scientific cognition, logical, comparative legal, statistical methods, as well as observation and other special methods of studying legal phenomena. The materials of the study were doctrinal sources, international and Russian legislations of various historic periods and criminal procedure legislations of the Commonwealth of Independent States countries. Results: as a result of the study, it was found that the modern criminal justice system in Russia does not contain norms allowing for the deposition of testimony, but law enforcement practice in complex criminal cases needs them. The authors propose the relevant amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, which aimed at the introduction of the criminal procedure Institute for Deposit of evidence. Discussion and Conclusions: the article presents the author's approach, aimed at improving the legislative mechanism to preserve evidence at the pretrial stage of the investigation, by making the following changes to the current Code of Criminal Procedure: 1) add item 14 of Part 2 of Article 29 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation "The Powers of the Court" with the following contents: "clause 14) on the deposition of the witness, the victim"; 2) Chapter 26. The interrogation. Face-to-face. Identification. Verification of testimony should be supplemented with a new Article 191.1 "Deposition of Testimony".