Prospects for the development of the mechanism for certifying the content and results of procedural action in the criminal proceedings in Russia

Introduction. The institution of witnesses has appeared in Russian legislation since the commencement of the Council Code of 1649 and has always performed certification functions in the actions of law enforcement officials to ensure their compliance with the law and to prevent the latter from various abuses. The status of a witness was granted to persons who were known, respected, and enjoyed a certain level of trust among the population; the murder of such a person carried the death penalty for the guilty person. With the development of modern society, especially at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, the attitude toward the status of a witness underwent cardinal changes. Citizens are extremely reluctant to participate in the role of a witness in various investigative actions; parties to the criminal process and society do not have the same trust in them. All this became possible for many reasons, the main of which are the degradation of the spiritual values of society and their commercialization, as well as a significant drop in the prestige of state power and law enforcement agencies in particular. The latter is because of the actions of individual representatives of law enforcement agencies themselves, who, knowingly violating the law, abused their powers contrary to the interests of the state and society. The judicial practice of the last three decades is replete with examples when, during the conduct of certain investigative as well as operational-search actions, persons were involved as witnesses who, obviously for the law enforcement officers, did not meet the requirements of the law for such parties to the criminal process. They were relatives and acquaintances of the representatives of law enforcement agencies, or the so-called “professional” witnesses, characterized by a low level of morality and ready to sign any document and give such evidence as they were told about. Establishing an objective truth about the facts under investigation with such parties to the criminal process becomes an impossible task. Naturally, all this did not and does not contribute to the achievement of the goals of criminal proceedings. Scientific and technological development, the introduction into our daily lives of various technical means, such as photo, sound, or video recording equipment, and their availability and relative cheapness have long raised the question of the expediency of preserving the institution of witnesses in domestic legislation and transferring the performance of the functions of a witness with the help of such technical means. The purpose of the study is to consider the prospects for the development of the institution of witnesses, its positive and negative aspects, and correlate them with the practice of using technical means to perform certification functions in criminal proceedings. Methods. The methodological framework for the study is a set of methods of scientific knowledge, among which the main ones are the methods of information processing and logical analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, and generalization. Results. The presented authors’ vision of the development of a mechanism that performs certification functions in the criminal process in the production of procedural actions, based on judicial and investigative practice, makes it possible to more fully present the existing problem in order to develop measures to level the existing negative consequences. Conclusions. As a result of the study, the prospects for the development of the institution of witnesses in the Russian criminal process and its positive and negative aspects, correlated with the practice of using technical means to perform certification functions in the production of investigative actions, are revealed.