Rehabilitation in criminal cases of private prosecution: problems of theory and practice
Authors: Titov Pavel 
Published: December 2022

Urgency of research. According to Articles 2, 17, 46 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the human being, his rights and freedoms are recognized as the supreme value, and observation and protection of these rights and freedoms is a duty of the State; every citizen is guaranteed judicial protection of his rights.

Criminal proceedings, which from a social point of view serve as a tool to protect the rights of victims of crimes, are based on a public-law basis. The initiation of criminal proceedings, preliminary investigation and trial are the responsibility of the competent public authorities. At the same time, in the case of unlawful or unjustified prosecution of a person, the harm caused to him is compensated at the expense of the federal budget in the framework of the rehabilitation procedure.

At the same time in Russian criminal proceedings there is the so-called private prosecution: for some offenses criminal prosecution is initiated and carried out only by the victim, who is granted the status of a private prosecutor. The state in cases of private prosecution is represented only by the court, which resolves the criminal-legal conflict between the victim and the accused.

Problem Statement. Since state bodies do not prosecute cases of private prosecution, the question arises whether rehabilitation of defendants, against whom the case was terminated or acquitted, is admissible. Currently, the legislation provides rehabilitation in cases of private prosecution only in cases where the court of first instance issued a verdict of guilty, which was subsequently overturned by a higher court. At the same time, the question of whether the accused, against whom there was no conviction and the criminal prosecution was terminated in the court of first instance, is entitled to compensation is not resolved. On the one hand, the accused, being subjected to criminal prosecution, has undergone certain negative consequences. On the other hand, it is not clear whether the private prosecutor should be considered «guilty» of making an unsubstantiated accusation. There is a clear competition between two constitutionally guaranteed rights: the right of the victim to protection from crime, including through independent appeal to court to bring the perpetrator to criminal liability, and the right of the person to compensation of damage caused by unjustified criminal prosecution.

Objectives and methods of research. The purpose of the study is to establish the grounds for the emergence of a person’s right to rehabilitation and to compensation for harm caused by unjustified criminal prosecution, to determine the subject and the procedure of compensation for harm.

Research objectives: to analyze the legislation on rehabilitation in cases of private prosecution; to systematize the normatively enshrined grounds for the right to rehabilitation in this category of cases; to clarify the possibility of compensation in cases where the criminal prosecution was carried out only by a private prosecutor; to determine the procedure for compensation.

The methodological basis of the study was the method of dialectical materialism. General scientific methods of scientific knowledge were used: logical, systematic, functional, induction and deduction, analysis and synthesis, as well as special methods: comparative-legal, formal-legal.

Results and key conclusions. In cases of private prosecution it is necessary to distinguish occurrence of the defendant’s right to rehabilitation in the criminal procedural sense (when the court of first instance rendered a guilty verdict, which was subsequently overturned by a higher court), and the right to compensation for damages (when the criminal prosecution was carried out by a private prosecutor and was terminated by the court of first instance). At the same time, the right to compensation arises only if the victim’s actions are malicious and if they constitute crimes such as slander or knowingly false denunciation. In other cases, the victim exercises their constitutional right to access to justice and to protection from crimes.