Principles of criminal proceedings as implementation of moral foundations of criminal procedural activities

Introduction: the investigation activity, judicial review and criminal trials are strictly regulated by the rules of the Criminal Procedure Act. The essence and purpose of criminal proceedings, the most important features and properties, core areas of the work of bodies and officials responsible for carrying out criminal procedural activity, as well as the basic provisions of the legal status of other participants are provided by its principles. However, criminal proceedings cannot rely on the norms of morality formed in society on the basis of ideas about justice, conscience, law and non-law. For the criminal procedure, the problem of building legislation and implementing law enforcement practice on the basis of morality is of particular importance due to the fact that this type of state activity is connected with the possibility of significant restriction of the rights and freedoms of citizens, with the invasion of their privacy. However, in Russian society in recent years, there is a restiveness of the moral content of the criminal procedure law, its principles and opposition to pre-trial and trial proceedings provided by the CPC of the Russian Federation, and norms of morality, which, allegedly, are different than the law, and values. Purpose: To analyze the correlation between criminal procedure principles and the moral foundations of criminal procedure; to present the author's ideas about the moral component of the initial beginning of the Russian criminal procedure, and about the position that should occupy the category of justice in regulation and implementation of criminal proceeding. Methods: The methodological basis of the study is general specific (dialectical, systemic, structural-functional and logical method and etc.), frequency-specific method (formal-juridical, comparative-legal, historical-legal, etc.), methods of cognition. Alongside with the methods of theoretical research, the authors used methods of empirical and experimental level: formalized interview, legal modeling. Results: The article presents the authors' conclusions about the essence and the system of criminal procedure principles and the necessity to supplement them with a number of legislative provisions. The effectiveness of justice and criminal proceedings, in general, are assessed due to the moral characteristics of society. Criminal procedural rules are contrary to the norms of morality and perceived by the public consciousness as injustice and, as a result, tend to be ineffective in investigative and judicial practice. Conclusions: The Russian doctrine and practice of criminal proceedings broaden this literal perception of justice in criminal proceeding which is contrary to the formally defined rule of the criminal procedure law on the fairness of the sentence in accordance with the punishment imposed by the court, of the seriousness of crime and the identity of the defendant. Justice in criminal proceedings is, first of all, the right to establish all the factual circumstances of the crime committed and bringing to responsibility those who are truly guilty of its commission. In order to consider justice as an unconditional reference for criminal procedure activity, it is necessary to establish this definition in the system of criminal procedure principles.