Exhumation in Russian criminal proceedings: religious, historical and normative aspects

Introduction. Along with innovations, the current Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation keeps some static in the regulation of investigative actions, including exhumation, and does not resolve problematic aspects. The need to improve the normative model of exhumation is determined by investigative practice demands. The scientific publications on the issues of exhumation touch upon various matters, mostly of a normative nature. However, no comprehensive studies reflecting religious, historical and normative aspects based on judicial practice and the experience of regulation in the criminal procedural legislation of some post-Soviet states have been published to date. Methods. The research was carried out in accordance with the principles of comprehensiveness, objectivity, historicism, pluralism and with the use of historicalgenetic, chronodiscrete and formal-logical methods, as well as document analysis. Results. The analysis of religious and historical aspects of exhumation, as well as its normative model, made it possible to formulate a number of conclusions: 1) the sacral attitude to death and burial rites makes it difficult to carry out exhumation; 2) the only acceptable way to solve this problem is the general culture and proper professional training of law enforcers, enabling them to correctly assess the need (or lack of such) to carry out exhumation and competently build communications with relatives of a buried person; 3) the regulation of exhumation is generally similar to that in the Judicial Statutes; 4) the brevity of exhumation regulation makes it difficult to implement the law and requires improvement of the existing normative model; 5) among other things, it is necessary to streamline the legal grounds for exhumation; clarify the range of subjects involved in exhumation and specify their procedural statuses; and provide a more detailed description of the procedure, including its documentation.