Article on judges' criminal liability for unjust decisions was actually used to put pressure on judges - Supreme Court head
There are only eight cases with sentences for judges for making an unlawful decision, two of which are acquittals, while article 375 of the Criminal Code, which the Constitutional Court recognized as unconstitutional, was actually used to put pressure on judges, head of the Supreme Court Valentyna Danishevska said.
In an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency, speaking about the number of cases on bringing judges to justice for unjust decisions and specific sentences, Danishevska said: "There are very few of them. We studied this issue: in fact, this article was used to put pressure on judges. According to our data, 1,000 applications against judges were registered in the register of pretrial investigations for the period from 2013 to 2019, and only eight sentences were rendered, and what is more, two of them were acquittal."
According to her, in 2019, 593 criminal proceedings were registered on applications for rendering unjust decisions by judges, and there were 242 proceedings over six months of 2020, two proceedings were transferred to the court in 2019, and there were no proceedings in the second half of 2020 yet.
"These figures are confirmation of the facts of pressure. A situation often happens when these statements come from the parties to the process, including from the prosecutors," said Danishevska.