The Role of the Prosecutor’s Office in Bringing the Accused to Trial by the Judicial Chamber of the Russian Empire

One of the conditions for solving modern problems is the study of historical experience. This also applies to criminal proceedings, one of the stages of which was bringing the accused to trial. In the criminal process of the Russian Empire, this stage appeared as a result of the judicial reform of 1864, which established principles, many of which were later accepted by the Soviet and modern Russian legislation.

The purpose of the article is to determine the role of the Prosecutor’s Office in bringing the accused to trial by the judicial chambers of the Russian Empire after the judicial reform of 1864. For this, the tasks were set not only to analyze the legal status of the prosecutor at the stage of bringing the accused to trial, but also to determine the effectiveness of its implementation in practice.

Methods. The methodological basis of the study was dialectical, systemic and praxeological approaches, as well as formal-logical, historical, statistical and special-legal (formal-legal, historical-legal, comparative-legal) methods.

Results. The reasons are shown why in cases of crimes for which deprivation or restriction of the rights of the state was envisaged, the legislator decided to grant the right to bring the accused to trial not to the prosecutor, but to the judicial chamber. The conditions and procedure for bringing to trial are analyzed, as well as the decisions taken by the judicial chamber based on the results of consideration of the conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office. Based on the analysis of statistical data, the effectiveness of the conclusions of the Prosecutor’s Office in criminal cases and the tendency to improve their quality are shown. The reasons for the proposals to reform the procedure for bringing to trial and to strengthen the role of the Prosecutor’s Office in this matter are considered. The process of legislative simplification of the procedure for bringing to trial in certain categories of cases and the process of expanding the influence of the Prosecutor’s Office are shown.