HOW TO ABOLISH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN RUSSIA
(annotation)
Grigory Belonuchkin
( grisha@space.ru )
Here is the English-language annotation of the article, describing legal mechanism of the abolition of capital punishment in Russia through the Constitutional Court. Full text in Russian is placed in the Internet at URL: http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/2568/k_sm-k.html. The shortened version in Russian was published in "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" on March, 16, 1996.
The described method will remain realizable after the new Criminal Code come into force (January, 1, 1997) because article 59 of the new Criminal Code is similar to article 23 of the Criminal Code currentky in force.
Capital punishment in Russia can be abolished in Russia just now, without waiting for changing the laws. It is enough to make an official complaint to the Constitutional Court about the contradiction between the article 23 of the Criminal Code, allowing death penalty for male citizens, and the article 19 of the Constitution stating equal rights for men and women.
Several months ago there was a precedent for spreading the privileges, granted by the law to the victims of political repressions to the additional category of citizens, namely their children, who has been in jail or exile with their parents. Acting in analogous way, the Constitutional Court should spread to men the abolition of capital punishment, that was legitimated in 1993 only for women. It is impossible to assume that the judges will make opposite decision and will allow death penalty for women. The worst possible variant is that no decision will be taken at all, but it is worth trying!
The draft of the Constitutional complaint is ready. But the law "On the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation" states that such complaint may be made only by a person blamed for the crime that, according to the Criminal Code, can be punished by death sentence. A social association also can made complaint, but it should be connected with the prosecution of the concrete person.
As for me, I have not done anything deserving death sentence and I have no such people between my friends and acquaintances. So, I offer this draft for everybody, who are accused, for their lawyers, and for the associations and institutions that are for abolition of capital punishment, hoping that they will do it in practice.
I suppose, that the text of complaint, written by me, is not absolutely perfect. But its technology should work, if only there appears a lawyer, who can and want decide this problem.
Full text of the complaint draft in Russian is placed in the Internet at the following URL:
http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/2568/k_sm-k.html
This text: http://www.oocities.org/CapitolHill/2568/e_sm-k.html
Sorry for my bad English language
Grigory Belonuchkin