The State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill on the immediate release of seriously ill prisoners
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On March 12, the State Duma unanimously adopted in the first reading a bill on the immediate release of seriously ill convicts. Currently, the law requires keeping them in custody for at least another 15 days after the relevant court decision. This period was set aside to give the prosecutor’s office time to appeal the release. If the prosecution appeals the court’s decision, the release of a seriously ill patient may be delayed for months.
As Kommersant previously reported (see issue dated February 20), draft amendments to Art. 399 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) was introduced to the State Duma in December last year by the Supreme Court (SC) of Russia. The explanatory note states that the current procedure for the release of seriously ill prisoners is “not fully consistent” with the Constitution, since “one of the fundamental rights of a person and a citizen is the right to life.” In addition, it does not meet the “goals of punishment” and “the principles of humanism and the rational use of coercive measures.” In this regard, the Supreme Court clarified that “the court’s decision regarding the release of a convicted person from serving his sentence due to illness… is subject to immediate execution.”
The Committee on State Construction and Legislation previously noted that amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code will make it possible to “increase the level of state guarantees for the protection of the life and health of citizens serving sentences, and prevent excessively prolonged restrictions on their rights and freedoms when applying criminal punishment in the event of a serious illness of the convicted person.”
The initiative of the Supreme Court was supported by human rights activists and the legal community. At the same time, experts interviewed by Kommersant said that the bill does not solve the main problem – the difficulty of obtaining the decision on release itself. For example, Alexander Maltsev, a member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Committee and a lawyer for the Prisoner Assistance Fund, said that problems begin at the stage of examining seriously ill prisoners: “Such an examination is carried out only upon the recommendation of the head of the institution. And then the process can last for years.” However, the Committee on State Construction and Legislation explained to Kommersant that the problem of obtaining the decision on release itself relates to law enforcement.
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