Amendments introduced to the State Duma on life punishment for high treason

The State Duma will consider amendments on life imprisonment for high treason, Vasily Piskarev, chairman of the Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, spoke about this in his Telegram channel. He clarified that “they are prepared for the draft law already adopted in the first reading, which will allow them to be considered promptly.”

The amendments to the Criminal Code, to which amendments are proposed, were proposed in November and approved in December 2022. The table of amendments for the second reading, which Piskarev speaks of, was not published on the State Duma website at the time of publication of the material. But the deputy described all the amendments:

The Chairman of the Supreme Court (SC), Vyacheslav Lebedev, in the course of his report on the results of the work of the courts for 2022, stated that 875 people were convicted for crimes of a terrorist nature (most of the listed articles belong to them). The number of those convicted for high treason is not named by the Armed Forces.

“The increase in the thresholds of punishment, firstly, provides for its serving in institutions with a special regime of detention, and secondly, the right to parole for those who are sentenced to life appears no earlier than 25 years later and subject to exemplary behavior “, – said Piskarev.

According to Art. 57 of the Criminal Code, life imprisonment is established for the commission of especially grave crimes that encroach on life, as well as for the commission of especially grave crimes against public health and public morality, public safety, sexual integrity of minors. Life imprisonment is not assigned to women, as well as to persons who have committed crimes under the age of eighteen, and to men who have reached the age of sixty-five by the time the court passes the sentence.

The introduction of such a penalty as life imprisonment in the context of these amendments applies primarily to those accused of treason. Now the punishment under Art. 275 of the Criminal Code provides for 12 to 20 years in prison.

At the same time, in 2022, the article has already been corrected. If earlier this act was understood as the issuance of state secrets, espionage and the provision of financial, logistical, consulting or other assistance in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, now it has been added to go over to the side of the enemy.

However, life imprisonment is a very rare form of punishment. In the first half of 2022 (no later data available), 29 people were sentenced to life imprisonment in Russia, according to the data on the website of the judicial department of the Armed Forces.

Back in September 2022 with a life sentence offer spoke State Duma Deputy Andrey Lugovoy (LDPR). The current amendments are being made a few days after the assassination of military commander Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin), whose funeral will take place on April 8 at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

On the evening of April 2, in St. Petersburg, a terrorist attack occurred in the Patriot bar on Universitetskaya embankment. According to the Ministry of Health, several dozen people were injured, 10 of them in serious condition. 26-year-old Daria Trepova was detained in connection with the terrorist attack, according to investigators, she was supervised by the Ukrainian special services.

After that, a member of the Human Rights Council, Kirill Kabanov, proposed that women be imprisoned for life. Now such a ban is contained in Art. 57 of the Criminal Code. But Piskarev said in his Telegram that “a number of other articles of the Criminal Code are also being specified,” in addition to those named by him.

“Society, as well as politicians, State Duma deputies believe that for certain actions in a given period of time there is not enough severe punishment,” says lawyer Anton Rudakov. The tightening of the Criminal Code requires a thorough approach to the legal analysis of the expediency and necessity of intervening in the norms of the law, Vladislav Radov, a lawyer at Key Consulting Group, noted.