The legal system uses the term prejudice. The word has Latin roots. Literally, it means “referring to a previous court decision”, “imposed in accordance with a previous act”.
In modern law, prejudice is a mandatory sentence that has entered into force for government agencies and officials conducting other criminal proceedings. Accordingly, the ruling itself is said to have prejudicial significance .
Consider the features of the application of prejudice.
90 article of the Code of Criminal Procedure
In accordance with this rule, the circumstances that were established by a decision (sentence) that entered into force and was adopted in the framework of civil, administrative, arbitration proceedings are recognized without additional verification by the investigator, court, interrogating officer, prosecutor. Moreover, such decisions cannot predetermine the guilt of entities that have not participated in the case before.
In practice, contradictions may arise between the prejudicial significance of the decisions and the internal conviction of the prosecutor, investigator, court for the same circumstances that were established by these decisions. In such situations, prejudice is given priority if these circumstances do not relate to the guilt of entities not previously involved in this case.
If the court has doubts about the facts established by the previous verdict, he can draw other conclusions by evaluating in aggregate the evidence gathered and verified by him.
Nuances
The prejudicial significance of a court decision may lose its force in the event of a review or due to newly discovered circumstances.
Explanations on this issue were given by the Constitutional Court in a decree of 2011 No. 30-P. The act established that the decision has prejudicial significance in a certain framework. They are determined by the fact that the facts in their legal essence, established by the court within the scope of the subject of the proceedings, may have a different meaning, acting as one of the elements of evidence in another case.
This is due to the fact that, firstly, the objects of evidence in different types of judicial proceedings do not coincide, and secondly, the competence of a court to study circumstances is limited to a specific type of legal proceedings.
Wrongfulness assessment
In criminal proceedings , the result of inter-industry prejudice may be the adoption by the court of information about the presence / absence of an event or act established in the civil process, but not qualifying it as unlawful. The assessment of wrongfulness is carried out only in criminal proceedings.
For example, a resolution in a civil case, which provides for the laying of a particular type of civil liability on a specific person, does not have prejudicial significance in a criminal case and cannot be taken as establishing the guilt of the subject in a criminal offense. Otherwise, there would be a violation of the constitutional provisions on the recognition of guilt solely by sentence and consideration of the case by the authority to whose competence it belongs.
Validity of the decision
Within the meaning of the provisions of Article 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the facts established by an enacted decision adopted at the end of proceedings in any type of proceedings are of prejudicial importance to a prosecutor, interrogating officer, court, criminal investigator in relation to an entity whose procedural provision was determined by a court act in another proceeding.
The legal force of the decision has subjective and objective limits of distribution. In this regard, for bodies conducting criminal proceedings, the circumstances established by decisions of other judicial instances cannot be mandatory if the matter on the merits was not resolved by the said acts. A similar rule applies to facts that were not the subject of consideration, although they appeared in the civil process. They do not have prejudicial significance due to the fact that they were not established by a court act following the results of the proceedings.
conclusions
The provisions of Article 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure indicate that:
- Circumstances of prejudicial significance should be considered the facts established by a court order that entered into force and resolved the merits of the case in the framework of the civil process. In other words, in criminal proceedings, the issue of duties and rights of an entity whose legal status has already been determined by a previous decision is considered.
- Actual circumstances do not in themselves determine conclusions about the guilt of a citizen. It is established on the basis of the totality of evidence, including not investigated during the consideration of a civil dispute, but subject to assessment in the framework of criminal procedure. This, in turn, may subsequently entail a review of the case for newly identified circumstances.
- Recognition of circumstances of prejudicial significance cannot create an obstacle to the criminal proceedings on the basis of the presumption of innocence. It can be refuted solely by the procedures enshrined in the Code of Criminal Procedure, and only during criminal proceedings.
- Circumstances that are not grounds for resolving a dispute on the merits within the framework of a civil process, if they reveal signs of crimes against justice, should be checked at all stages of the criminal proceedings, including at the stage of opening a case and conducting an investigation. At the same time, evidence is examined that has not been previously studied by the court.
Tax disputes
In practice, difficulties often arise when considering circumstances of prejudicial importance in the arbitration process with the participation of tax structures. In particular, the question of whether the IFTS and UFNS can be recognized as one participant in the case has long remained unresolved. Answers to it 2.
In accordance with one approach, tax structures form a single system for monitoring the implementation of the provisions of the Tax Code, while speaking not on their own behalf, but on behalf of the state. Consequently, the decision on the dispute, in which the IFTS and the controlled organization participated, has prejudicial significance for the FMS in another case involving the same legal entity.
Another approach assumes that the IFTS and UFNS are independent organizations. They are equally vested with the obligations and rights of the parties to the arbitration dispute. Accordingly, the Inspectorate and the Office cannot be considered one person in different industries with the participation of one legal entity. Judicial practice shows that most instances adhere to this particular approach.
Priority Issues
As you know, the consideration of complaints against decisions of tax inspectorates falls within the exclusive competence of arbitrations. At the same time, in accordance with Article 90 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the decision of the arbitration court is of primary importance in tax disputes. As a rule, applicants refer to this fact.
Arbitration is obliged to suspend the proceedings if it is related to another dispute pending before the Constitutional Court, the charter (constitutional) court of a region of the Russian Federation, the court of general jurisdiction or arbitration and having prejudicial value in matters of factual circumstances established by the arbitrators in relation to the participants in the proceedings. The corresponding provision is fixed by 1 paragraph of the first part 143 of the article of the agro-industrial complex.
ECHR and Prejudice
It should be noted that article 90 does not mention the European Court. Consequently, the question of the prejudicial significance of its decisions for domestic authorities remains unresolved today. However, since the ECHR is not part of the domestic judicial system, its acts were not and, most likely, will not be prejudicial.
Article 311 of the APC indicates that, in addition to the rest, a violation of the Convention for the Protection of Rights in a Specific Arbitration Case, as established by the European Court, may be used as a basis for reviewing arbitration awards on newly discovered facts, in connection with which the subject appealed to ECtHR