Andrіі Borovyk, Aleksandr Rubis
Andrіі Borovyk, PhD in Law, Associate Professor, Academician of Academy of Administrative and Legal Sciences, Professor at the Department of Criminal and Administrative Legal Sciences Academician Stepan Demianchuk International University of Economics and Humanities (Rivne, Ukraine)
Aleksandr Rubis, Doctor of Law, Professor, Professor at the Department of Criminal Procedure Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus (Minsk, Republic of Belarus)
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1834-404X
Anotation. The expert opinion is the most important and widespread form of application of special knowledge that has evidentiary value in criminal proceedings. The fate of the participants in the process and the whole case depends in most cases on the effectiveness of detecting, seizing and fixing the trace picture of a crime, observing the procedural order of appointment and conducting forensic examinations, as well as on the means and methods used in these studies. First of all, any factual data obtained in the process of expert research should be an objective category. To evaluate this knowledge means to be able to check the relevance, admissibility and reliability of both the process of forensic knowledge itself and its results, set out in the conclusions. One of the most difficult situations in the appraisal activity of the prosecutor is the study and analysis of expert opinions, which contain conclusions about the impossibility of resolving the issue(s) on the merits. In the practice of law enforcement, such conclusions were called NPS – not possible. It may seem that the presence of conclusions in the expert opinion that contain the formulations of the NPS minimizes the very possibility of an effective assessment of the study, since this study, for one reason or another, was not possible to carry out properly. However, this judgment is incorrect. In accordance with the current legislation of the Republic of Belarus, the following cases may be grounds for NPS: limited scope of the expert’s special knowledge; provision by the initiator of the appointment of an examination of unsuitable (insufficient) materials for research; the state of science and expert practice; the lack of the necessary instrumentation base, etc. – that collectively or separately does not allow the expert to answer in essence the questions posed to him. As a rule, such a result as NPS can be obtained only at the final stage of the examination – at the stage of evaluating the research results and formulating conclusions. NPS is a form of expert conclusions, which should be formulated on the basis of an analysis of the results obtained during the production of all previous stages of the study, explaining the presence and origin of established facts (actual data), assessing these facts in order to explain the reasons for their origin and identify assessing these facts in order to explain the reasons for their origin and identify sufficient grounds for confirmation or refutation of the results of the study. In other words, the conclusion of the NPS can be obtained only after a full-fledged expert study, having reliably convinced of the impossibility of solving certain issues. But after all, in the practice of law enforcement, especially in the implementation of criminal prosecution processes, the issue of obtaining certain forensic expert studies is very often extremely acute, and the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve specific issues carries a double danger for the proving process: firstly, precious time that was, in a sense, wasted on expert study; secondly, the conclusions of the NPS entail even greater uncertainty, which cannot contribute to the correct adoption of further procedural decisions. In this regard, such an expert opinion should be thoroughly examined by the prosecutor.
Keywords: The expert opinion is the most important and widespread form of application of special knowledge that has evidentiary value in criminal proceedings. The fate of the participants in the process and the whole case depends in most cases on the effectiveness of detecting, seizing and fixing the trace picture of a crime, observing the procedural order of appointment and conducting forensic examinations, as well as on the means and methods used in these studies. First of all, any factual data obtained in the process of expert research should be an objective category. To evaluate this knowledge means to be able to check the relevance, admissibility and reliability of both the process of forensic knowledge itself and its results, set out in the conclusions. One of the most difficult situations in the appraisal activity of the prosecutor is the study and analysis of expert opinions, which contain conclusions about the impossibility of resolving the issue(s) on the merits. In the practice of law enforcement, such conclusions were called NPS – not possible. It may seem that the presence of conclusions in the expert opinion that contain the formulations of the NPS minimizes the very possibility of an effective assessment of the study, since this study, for one reason or another, was not possible to carry out properly. However, this judgment is incorrect. In accordance with the current legislation of the Republic of Belarus, the following cases may be grounds for NPS: limited scope of the expert’s special knowledge; provision by the initiator of the appointment of an examination of unsuitable (insufficient) materials for research; the state of science and expert practice; the lack of the necessary instrumentation base, etc. – that collectively or separately does not allow the expert to answer in essence the questions posed to him. As a rule, such a result as NPS can be obtained only at the final stage of the examination – at the stage of evaluating the research results and formulating conclusions. NPS is a form of expert conclusions, which should be formulated on the basis of an analysis of the results obtained during the production of all previous stages of the study, explaining the presence and origin of established facts (actual data), assessing these facts in order to explain the reasons for their origin and identify assessing these facts in order to explain the reasons for their origin and identify sufficient grounds for confirmation or refutation of the results of the study. In other words, the conclusion of the NPS can be obtained only after a full-fledged expert study, having reliably convinced of the impossibility of solving certain issues. But after all, in the practice of law enforcement, especially in the implementation of criminal prosecution processes, the issue of obtaining certain forensic expert studies is very often extremely acute, and the conclusion that it is impossible to resolve specific issues carries a double danger for the proving process: firstly, precious time that was, in a sense, wasted on expert study; secondly, the conclusions of the NPS entail even greater uncertainty, which cannot contribute to the correct adoption of further procedural decisions. In this regard, such an expert opinion should be thoroughly examined by the prosecutor.