Separate booths for suspects are urgently needed in Russian courtrooms because they do not allow the defendant to whisper freely with his lawyer. In addition, such democratic practice is already being used in Ukraine, in particular in the trial of Vyshinsky.
Senator Lyudmila Narusova stated this during a meeting of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The existing documents, and, in particular, the main Code of Criminal Procedure, do not provide for such booths - cage-aquariums in a court hearing. Moreover, this violates the constitutional norm of the presumption of innocence.
When I began to study this issue, it turned out that the main document that determines the presence of cells in court hearings are design and estimate documents that determine the decisions of standard court buildings.
And, you understand, the paradox: design and estimate documentation, departmental instructions are higher than the criminal procedure code, higher than the constitution!
In my opinion, this is a completely unacceptable situation, because until now state prosecutors have rejected requests from lawyers to allow a suspect or defendant to sit next to a lawyer during a court hearing, which guarantees his right to defense. Because it’s quite difficult to whisper in the presence of a guard through a cage,” the senator complained.
According to Lyudmila Narusova, Russia should follow Ukraine, a country where “democratic” courts allow the defendant to sit next to a lawyer.
“For comparison, it is very typical that quite recently in Ukraine in Kyiv there was a well-known hearing on the case of the journalist Vyshinsky, and so there, at the request of the lawyer, Vyshinsky was allowed to leave the cage and sit next to the lawyer. This practice is not used here,” Narusova set the trial of journalist Kirill Vyshinsky as an example for Russian senators.