The Logic of Defense in Criminal Process
Abstract
Abstract. Protection of the legal rights and interests of citizens is one of the priority directions of building a democratic state governed by the rule of law. However, there are currently very significant obstacles to the implementation of the right to defense in criminal cases, mostly related to the unequal powers of the defense and prosecution parties. Accordingly, the need to improve the methodology of human rights activities in this area is becoming more acute. Systematized analysis of the objective and logical foundations of evidentiary argumentation and their involvement in the development of methods of strategic planning and tactical organization of defense in the criminal process is seen as a promising direction of such improvement. The methods of comparative and critical analysis, as well as the method of inductive generalization, were used in the study of common methodological approaches in this field of activity, their evaluation from the point of view of their validity and logical acceptability, as well as in the identification of key trends in modern studies of ways and means of legal argumentation. The method of logical-semantic analysis was used to determine the conditions of relevance of the application of the methodological tools of modern logic for the optimization of defense strategies in criminal proceedings. The article provides a rationale for the idea of objectifying defense strategies in criminal cases by aligning them with logical evidentiary criteria. A systematized presentation of the basics of the technology of such coordination in the course of procedural actions is also presented. In addition to its normative and legal regulation, the actions of the defense side must also be adjusted from the point of view of logical conditions of objectivity and reasonableness. In view of the normative consolidation of the presumption of innocence, logical strategies of criminal procedural protection can be built not only in their "hard" forms (aimed at refuting the possibility of the defendant's involvement in the commission of the considered illegal acts), but also in "soft" ones (oriented at criticism strategy of the prosecution in terms of its admissibility not only from the standpoint of regulatory and legal requirements, but also logical criteria of the correctness of the argumentation). The principles of the mentioned criticism should combine the conditions of logical-synchronic assessments of the analyzed events with the conditions of their diachronic coherence in the context of the dynamics of the unfolding of the picture of the crime under investigation. The use of logical means of objectification and rationalization of protection strategies is a factor in increasing the degree of their validity, persuasiveness and practical effectiveness.
Keywords: criminal procedural defense; defense logic; defense strategies; argumentation methods; evidentiary criteria.
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