Violators are given a limitation period – Newspaper Kommersant No. 28 (7473) dated February 15, 2023

The State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill prepared by the government, which is designed to clarify the question that worries many motorists: from what moment is the deadline for imposing fines for traffic violations or deprivation of a driver’s license? The Constitutional Court demanded to develop clarifications, seeing in the current Code of Administrative Offenses “uncertainty”, which leads to contradictory practice. Courts and administrative authorities calculate the limitation period for liability either starting from the day of the violation or from the day after it. In clarifying amendments, the White House proposed to calculate this period not in months, but in days, in order to equalize the rights of citizens, eliminating the calendar error.

The State Duma on Tuesday adopted in the first reading government amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, developed in pursuance of the decision of the Constitutional Court (CC). As “Kommersant” said, in May 2022, the Constitutional Court found that the current code contains “uncertainty” in terms of calculating the statute of limitations for bringing to responsibility for an administrative offense, for example, for traffic violations. The sanction, we recall, cannot be issued later than two months after the violation (if cases are considered by the traffic police or other supervisory agencies) or three months later – in the case of court proceedings (for violations that provide for deprivation of rights, etc.). However, the Constitutional Court pointed out, it is not clear from what moment this period should be counted: from the day of the violation or from the day after the violation. This conclusion was made after studying the case of Muscovite Olga Melnikova, whom the court deprived of her rights on March 22, 2021 for a violation committed on December 22, 2020.

The Constitutional Court ordered the State Duma to adopt corrective amendments, and until that moment the statute of limitations is counted from the date of the offense. Now this rule will be enshrined in Art. 4.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. At the same time, the two months mentioned in the current legislation will be replaced by 60 calendar days, three months – by 90 calendar days.

This was done “to ensure the principle of equality of persons before the law,” explained Andrei Loginov, deputy head of the Ministry of Justice, speaking in the State Duma.

“This situation seems to be quite fair,” Sergei Radko, a lawyer for the “Freedom of Choice” movement, believes. “After all, months have a different number of days, and, for example, the first two months of the year – January and February – total 59 days (or 60 in a leap year). ), and the last two summer months, July and August, – 62. And this difference of two or three days actually means that the fate of violators who have committed exactly the same violations, but in different months, may turn out differently: one will receive a well-deserved punishment on the eve of the expiration of the statute of limitations, and the other by the same moment will already be beyond jurisdiction.

Sergey Lisin, a partner at BGP Litigation, believes that the bill “did not add obvious clarity” to the issues of calculating the statute of limitations for prosecution. “All the verbal turns that were in the old version of the Code of Administrative Offenses and related to the controversial issue remained literally unchanged,” he draws attention. “Technically, these proposals were simply separated into separate new paragraphs. Verbal turns in the bill will be re-interpreted by judges, lawyers, government agencies based on their own understanding of what was written. All that remains is to wait for a new plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which will put everything in its place.”

Ivan Buranov