Judicial Examination and Pre-Trial “Crypto Examination” of Evidence in a Criminal Case

Introduction: with this paper, the author continues the cycle of publications dealing with the examination of evidence as one of the components of criminal procedural proof; in particular, he returns to the problems raised in the paper previously published in the journal Legal Concept = Pravovaya Paradigma – “Judicial Investigation in A Criminal Case: Collection or Examination of Evidence?” The reasons that predetermined the obvious need for the legal regulation of judicial examination of evidence and the non-obviousness of such a need for pre-trial examination of evidence are considered. The purpose of the paper is to identify the doctrinal parallels between explicit judicial and hidden pre-trial examination of evidence in criminal proceedings. Methods: in preparing the paper, the general scientific research methods were used: the dialectical method of cognition, the method of system analysis, the formal logical methods, etc., as well as the special research methods: the formal legal method, the historical legal method, the method of comparative law, etc. The results of the conducted research allowed taking another step towards a comprehensive study of the phenomenon of examination of evidence in the general mechanism of criminal procedure evidence. Conclusions: 1) the most probable reasons for the legislator’s insufficiently attentive attitude to the phenomenon of examination of evidence are identified; 2) an acceptable explanation is found for the limited legislative regulation of examination of evidence exclusively at the judicial stages of criminal proceedings; 3) it is proved that it is impossible to limit the scope of application of the examination of evidence only to legal relations inherent in the judicial stages of criminal proceedings.