PROTECTION OF PERSONAL NON-PROPERTY RIGHTS (PRIVATE INTEREST) OF A DECEASED VICTIM IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS (BY PUBLIC LAW METHODS)

Protection of citizens’ rights from criminal encroachments by criminal law and criminal procedure methods is the task of state bodies and officials. It is solved through criminal prosecution of suspects and defendants. The victim, endowed by criminal law and criminal procedure law with the right of criminal prosecution has the right to protect his or her rights and interests, including through the right to an effective investigation. The death of the victim does not suspend or eliminate the need to investigate and resolve the criminal case, since the purpose of criminal proceedings is to bring to criminal responsibility the person who committed the crime, to impose a fair punishment (or to release the innocent from criminal responsibility), to protect and restore the victim’s rights. Whether the victim’s rights are lost due to his death, whether the institute of legal succession in criminal proceedings is sufficiently regulated, what rights and to whom are transferred from the deceased victim, what are the features of protection of personal non-property rights of the victim through criminal proceedings. These issues are the subject of discussions in science and have not yet been resolved at the legislative level. The purpose of the study is to identify the problems of succession in criminal proceedings and their resolution in the doctrine regardless of what property or personal non-property rights of the deceased victim are protected, as well as to determine the impact on the status of the successor of the deceased victim of the moment of the victim’s death and the connection of the victim’s death with the crime. Methods: empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation; theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic; specific scientific methods: legal-dogmatic and interpretation of legal norms. Results: the study reveals the need to regulate the transfer of rights of the deceased victim to his close relatives, close persons or relatives, and in their absence to persons on the prosecution side through the institute of criminal procedure succession. The regulation of procedural rights of the legal successor of the victim should not be affected by the following circumstances: whether the victim died as a result of a crime committed against him or not in connection with it, or when the crime was committed against the property or personal non-property rights of the already deceased victim, protected by the state in the form of fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in Chapter Two of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.