On the criminal and legal consequences of the change of the crime category by the court
Authors: Lobanova L. V. 
Published: April 2022

The article highlights a complex of issues related to the criminal-legal consequences of the application by the court of the provisions of Part 6 of Article 15 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation. The author emphasizes the importance of establishing the impact of changing the category of crime on the development of criminal law in order to fulfill its intended purpose by the relevant legal provision. At the same time, it is stated that the legislative regulation of the limits of such influence is unsatisfactory, as well as the lack of their definition in theory and judicial practice. It can explain why the author chose such a goal of the study to develop approaches that are acceptable from the point of view of fundamental provisions of criminal and criminal procedure legislation to establish the limits of the impact of a change in the category of a crime by the court on the criminal responsibility of the culprit and its implementation and to solve the applied problem of forming recommendations to optimize the system of legal prescriptions regarding the categorization of criminal acts and its meaning on this basis. The article considers the practice of the application by courts of various levels of the provisions of Part 6 of Article 15 of Criminal Code of Russian Federation, an analysis of interpretative acts adopted by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of Russian Federation after the addition of the criminal law with a norm allowing the court to lower the category of a crime was carried out, the vulnerability of some recommendations contained in the studied documents was noted. The author concludes that the impact of changing the category of the latter cannot relate to those issues on which the attribution of a crime to a particular category or its change depends. As a disadvantage of legal regulation of changing the category of crime, the indication in the considered part of Article 15 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation to impose a punishment not higher than the threshold established by law as a prerequisite for making such a decision was recognized. Proposals have been made for correction, taking into account this edition of Part 6 of Article 15 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation. A recommendation was also formulated to supplement the named article with new parts devoted to the regulation of the criminal-legal consequences of the implementation of part 6. They proposed, in particular, to consolidate the prescriptions: 1) on the need to impose punishment within the limits established by law for the category of crime determined by the court; 2) on the admissibility of the release of the convicted person from punishment in the presence of the circumstances provided for by Articles 75, 76, 76/1, 76/2, 90 of the Criminal Code of Russian Federation, and the obligation of the court to make such a decision if the crime for which the guilty person is convicted has been classified by him [by the court] as a medium-gravity crime; 3) the need to resolve issues related to the execution of punishment, criminal record, the application of limitation and amnesty, taking into account the category of crime determined by the court.