Зв’язок якості слідчих (розшукових) дій, тактики захисту та рішень суду першої інстанції (на прикладі справ про порушення правил безпеки дорожнього руху)

The success of the criminal proceedings tasks specified in Art. 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Ukraine depends on the quality of procedural actions. The truth of this statement is clearly illustrated by criminal proceedings on road traffic safety violations. In the courtroom there is a conditional “procedural triangle”, in which (1) the prosecution, (2) the defense and (3) the court work with the same evidence and their sources. In each such case, it should be expected that the defense in the adversarial process will use all opportunities to present problems and errors in the protocols and their annexes, in the process of conducting actions, involving persons or explaining procedural rights and obligations, etc. As a result of this activity may be confirmation of the inadmissibility of the evidence. An acquittal may be possible, even when a person actually committed a crime, but the pre-trial investigation body was unable to qualitatively collect evidentiary information.The purpose of this study was, firstly, to determine the main defensive arguments that are aimed at the destruction of evidence due to the low quality of investigative (search) actions; secondly, to describe the assessment of such arguments by the court. The empirical basis of the study was the verdicts of the courts of first instance placed in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions with legal qualification under Art. 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. During the study, typical defensive arguments regarding evidence from crime scene inspection protocols, investigative experiment and expert opinions were outlined; the assessment of these arguments by the courts was shown; attention was drawn to the existence of “uncertainty” of some parameters, which complicates procedural decisions. The article emphasizes the need to increase attention to the forensic methods for investigating road traffic safety violations, including forensic characteristics that help avoid mistakes.