The draft law on the exclusion of the death penalty from the Criminal Code returned to the authors

On April 12, the State Duma Council, as Vedomosti noted, decided to return to the authors a draft law on the exclusion of the death penalty from the Criminal Code (CC). Until now, capital punishment is listed as one of the types of punishment in the Criminal Code, but is not used in Russia due to the current moratorium, the existence of which is supported by the decisions of the Constitutional Court in 1999 and 2009. The bill in question proposed to completely exclude the phrase “death penalty” from the Criminal Code. Among the authors of the initiative, introduced back in 2001, are deputies of the State Duma of the III convocation from the SPS faction, including Boris Nemtsov, Yegor Gaidar, Sergey Kovalev, Boris Nadezhdin, Irina Khakamada and others.

Back in 2014, one of the co-authors of the initiative, at that time a deputy no longer from the SPS, but from A Just Russia, Elena Mizulina herself withdrew her signature on the bill. The rest have long ceased to be members of the lower house of parliament. Khakamada did not answer calls from Vedomosti. Nadezhdin said that he was not notified about the withdrawal of the bill. Pavel Krasheninnikov (now United Russia) remained the only State Duma deputy among the authors of this bill.

The agenda of the Council of the State Duma dated April 12 states that the State Construction Committee, now headed by Krasheninnikov, is proposed to return the bill to the author of the legislative initiative in accordance with Part 4 of Art. 114 regulations of the State Duma. It follows from this paragraph that the initiative can be returned to the authors if it provides for amendments to laws that have expired. An alternative would be to decide on the rejection of the initiative by a vote of the lower house at the meeting.

In recent months, the State Duma has stepped up work to get rid of “hung” bills that have been lying in committees without movement for many years. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin raised the question of the effectiveness of the work of the Duma committees, in particular, about “hanging bills,” at the council on February 27. The next day, at a plenary session closed to journalists, Volodin raised the issue of the effectiveness of the work of the committees (Vedomosti about this wrote 28th of February).

Last month, bills were included in the agenda of the Council of the State Duma, which were returned to their authors, while some bills, mainly from the opposition, were submitted to meetings and rejected. Some of the government bills began to independently recall the White House. At the same time, at one of the councils, the presidential representative in the State Duma, Harry Minkh, raised the issue of a legal conflict related to the return of bills to deputies of previous convocations, since the State Duma of the VIII convocation is now working, several interlocutors told Vedomosti on Okhotny Ryad.