Responsibility for Bribery or Coercion to Testify or Avoidance of Giving Testimony or Misinterpreting (Art. 309 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation): Legislative Structure and Implementation Practices

The text analysis of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation revealed a number of shortcomings in the legislative structure of the component elements of a crime provided for therein. It is concluded that a different degree of danger of bribery and coercion of the participants in the legal proceedings underlying the design of their basic structures (parts 1 and 2 of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) must be sustained in their qualified compositions (part 4 of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code RF). That is, bribery committed by an organized group and coercion committed by an organized group should be provided not in one but in different parts of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code, containing various sanctions. In Art. 309 of the Criminal Code, the use of violence that is not dangerous to life or health is a qualifying element of coercion of participants in legal proceedings (part 3). Consequently, the use of violence dangerous to life or health can only be an element of coercion of these persons. Further differentiation of responsibility is required under Part 2 of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code, since coercion to action is objectively more dangerous than coercion to inaction. Other gaps in the legislative structure of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation were identified in the course of a study of the judicial investigative practice of its application. It is concluded that formally forcing the victim to avoid reporting the crime (or bribing him for this purpose) is not tantamount to forcing him to avoid giving testimony, since reporting a crime with the law enforcement authorities cannot be considered a testimony. In this sense, it should be recognized that the disposition of the norm contained in Part 2 of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code, contains a gap that must be addressed by pointing to coercion to avoid reporting a crime.

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