Conducting forensic examination in Ukraine. To date, the pre-trial investigation in criminal takes important and involves several stages respectively. Certainly an important and necessary for an unbiased opinion in many investigations is forensics. In Ukraine it regulated by the Law of Ukraine “On legal expertise” from 25.02.1994 year.
Although the law has more than twenty years, it contains provisions that experts say significantly impede the development of legal expertise in Ukraine. The basic idea of the law is to regulate the procedure for training and certification of persons wishing to obtain the status of a court expert. That is for the expert opinion the person is not enough to be a specialist in a particular area, it has yet to confirm their qualifications and get the status of a court expert. This situation complicates several activities on the development of judicial expertise.
First, the scope of human activity is so broad that virtually impossible to predict exactly which area of expertise may need specialist who would help the court decide an issue that requires special knowledge. Even legislators left a loophole which made it possible to continue to resort to court unattested expert, in the light of the latest version of the Law of Ukraine “On legal expertise” is also blocked, as part 3 of Article 7 of the Act establishes the requirement for mandatory certification and registration used during examination techniques. So even court involvement unique in its field, but not registered, experts have questioned its conclusions due to the fact that he used the technique to be first are licensed and registered with the Register of techniques.
Second, actually were blocked with traffic trasolohiyiyi study conducted by experts at the request of interested parties, and above all, insurance companies. Given the growing workload of forensic examination institutions, such studies are often conducted recently non-expert organization. In this case, the refusal of the Ministry of Justice to certify experts in this field non-state actors, using only institute experts allowed in any way to meet the growing demand for such studies.
This is not all contentious aspects of the Law “On legal expertise”, causing great difficulties in criminal proceedings. This problem requires professional solutions, which may be obtained by reference to the experience of some Western countries.
For example, in any of the EU countries such there is no law at all. In Germany, a court is an expert brought by the court under oath. Thus, each of the parties (both criminal and civil) can hold their own in case of necessary expertise and competition several examinations – is quite common for German jurisprudence matter. For convenience, the court may, of course, use a specialized registry, which contains information on individuals with special knowledge (eg register of commerce and industry or craft chambers). However, the fact of this registry does not give any advantage to the experts that it is not specified.
In Ukraine there are lots of NGOs and various associations that bring together experts of a particular field (eg, appraisers, emergency commissioners, auditors, etc.), which may give the court its opinion on matters requiring specialized knowledge.
As a result dyiyi Law “On legal expertise” law forensic expert activity largely stalled, leading to a breach of the procedural deadlines and stagnation in the development of forensics in Ukraine.
