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© Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Belarus
The prosecution’s proposals were summarized and presented by the chief prosecutor’s spokeswoman, Siika Mileva (center), and the deputy chief prosecutor, Krassimira Filipova.
Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev and the expert council he created in mid-May propose legislative changes to reduce the formality in criminal proceedings, lower the level of evidence, broaden the competence of military prosecutors, and effectively use the resources of investigators .
The changes have already been sent to the National Assembly, the Ministry of Justice and the Council of Ministers, which depends on whether they should be submitted for discussion and adopted, explained in a briefing the spokesperson for the Attorney General Siika Mileva and the Deputy . Chief Prosecutor Krassimira Filipova.
According to Mileva, Geshev’s proposals and the expert council are fully in line with the recommendations and conclusions of the EC’s annual reports on the cooperation and verification mechanism in recent years, as well as with the conclusions of the new European mechanism for rule of law.
The proposals are not new and Geshev has mentioned them many times, claiming that the formalism in the criminal process in Bulgaria is too great, that Bulgaria is one of the countries with higher requirements for evidence compared to other European countries, and that the researchers and military prosecutors can be used more effectively in investigations, but a change in legislation is needed to expand their functions and powers.
Some of these proposals are mentioned in the report on the activities of the prosecution from the beginning of the year to the end of August 2020, which was presented by Geshev to the National Assembly on Friday, and later today the deputies of the parliamentary committee on issues legal listens.
Simpler accusations, no details
The Prosecutor’s Office proposes that the Code of Criminal Procedure include the simplification of the accusations, which currently require the repeated repetition of facts and details. According to the state attorney’s office, due to detailed requirements, in some cases the indictments are more than 1000 pages long.
“The facts should be presented in a simpler form, without serious analysis and without argumentation of the evidence,” the prosecutor’s office suggested, adding that the state prosecutor’s office could only present important issues to the court: the crime and the guilt of the accused. .
The prosecution also suggests that not all formal violations in the evidence gathering process should lead to your disability. According to Krassimira Filipova, very often due to a formal violation in the collection of evidence, acquittals are reached and some evidence is collected only once and there is no way to repeat the process if there is a violation. It proposes that the tests be rejected as suitable only if there is a material breach of the rules or there are doubts about their veracity.
“Any formal violation in the evidence collection process leads to its inappropriateness. This significantly complicates the evidence process. And acquittals are achieved with clear evidence of the perpetrator and his guilt,” Filipova said.
According to her, at the moment, the Bulgarian standard for evidence requires the prosecutor to be satisfied that all evidence to reveal the truth is available before taking the case to court. He explained that the expert council has made a comparative analysis of the legal framework in other European countries and this issue is quite different there.
She gave the example of France, noting that the prosecutor is not required to be convinced at all, but it is enough to have serious evidence. According to her, in Italy there was an automatism: when there is evidence, the case is taken to court.
“The rules should establish fewer requirements and the facts should be presented in a simpler form,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The chief prosecutor’s spokesman recalled that in May Geshev proposed amendments to the Penal Code to increase the penalties and penalties for causing an accident after consuming alcohol or drugs. However, according to Mileva, there was no political response to the proposals. Geshev’s ideas were presented after the severe accident that killed journalist and television host Milen Tsvetkov.
Who advised Geshev on the proposed changes
Chief prosecutor Ivan Geshev established a council of experts in mid-May, which includes representatives of the scientific community with experience in the field of law and law enforcement, the prosecutor’s office said. Two of the names make a special impression: one is former chief prosecutor Nikola Filchev, and the other is Professor Vasil Mrachkov, the last prosecutor of the “Zhivkov” era. Because of Mrachkov, the honorary leader of the MRF, Ahmed Dogan, resigned from the Stara Planina Order after learning that Mrachkov, the chief prosecutor at the time of the so-called revival process.
Ivan Geshev announced the idea of setting up such an advisory council as soon as he took over as chief prosecutor in mid-December last year. He then responded to a journalist’s question about the opinion of the prosecution on the president’s ongoing debate on changes to the Constitution, explaining that a detailed analysis would be made in the prosecution and the experts invited to a special advisory council would be heard.
The expert council includes 17 individuals, including former chief prosecutors and deputy prosecutors, law professors and researchers.
More on the Attorney General’s expert advice – read here
What Ivan Geshev reports with the report on the activity of the prosecution – read here
What are the conclusions of the first Annual Report on the rule of law in the European Union? Here
