Tactical techniques of the parties and the judge during the consideration of a criminal case in the court of first instance
Authors:   Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Bryanskaya Elena V. 
Published: October 2024

Nowadays, due to the principle of adversarial nature of the parties, the questions concerning the means of realisation of this principle are more and more relevant. For us it was cognitive to consider some tactical techniques that can be used by the parties and the court during the consideration of a criminal case in the court of first instance. In particular, we believe that from a creative point of view the techniques proposed by modern authors are of interest. For example, in the analysed scientific article we have given the speech tactics of the parties, which had an effective impact on the internal conviction of the judge, as well as some tactical errors. The scientific literature distinguishes tactical techniques formed for the benefit of realisation of the planned strategy of psychological influence, which is distinguished by universality, and directly or indirectly can be used by all participants of criminal proceedings. The authors, based on the study of communicative tactics, consider psychological tactics as tools of verbal nature. For example, the tactics of the prosecutor are aimed at exerting psychological influence on the defendant, as the authors write: "to make him admit his guilt". The defence counsel "uses tactics as one of the means of defence, allowing him to seize the initiative in the process of judicial investigation and present to the court an alternative version of the incident with possible new suspects, motives for their crime". Such tactical directions predetermine speech styles of behaviour of the defence lawyer, prosecutor. Psychological tactics are realised through the emotional state of judicial discourse, as well as their desire to effectively influence each other, provokes the use of psychological influence tactics. Tactics for the benefit of strategy implementation, through tactical techniques and combinations, should pursue the implementation of the fundamental principles of criminal proceedings: legality, adversarial proceedings, presumption of innocence, respect for the honour and dignity of the individual, and all other principles regulated by the second chapter of the CPC of the Russian Federation. In addition, since in the development of the norms of federal legislation, each judicial and prosecutor's office and the legal profession has developed, adopted and operate ethical rules that should accompany a professional in the process of arguing a case in court. Having considered the specifics of argumentation tactics, we concluded that its use in the speech of a professional defender, prosecutor consists of several objectives: harmonized and logical persuasion through interrelated evidence, building a constructive dialogue and respectful mutual understanding, activation of influence on the internal conviction of the judge in the light of the following principles of criminal procedural law - legality, adversarial, presumption of innocence and respect for the honor and dignity of the individual.