June 19, 2024
On June 19, 2024, the Second Senate of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, at the public part of the plenary session, in the form of written proceedings, deliberated the case upon the constitutional complaint of Dmytro Havryliuk regarding the constitutionality of Article 615.6 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine.
During the plenary session, the judge-rapporteur in the case, Viktor Gorodovenko, underscored that Dmytro Havryliuk appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the compliance of Article 615.6 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (hereinafter, the “Code”) with Articles 3.2, 8.1, 8.2, 29.1, 29.2, 55, 126.1, 129.2.1 of the Constitution of Ukraine.
According to the impugned provision of the Code, “in case of expiration of the court ruling on detention and impossibility of deliberation by the court of the issue of detention period extension in accordance with the procedure established by this Code, the chosen precautionary measure in the form of detention shall be deemed to be extended until the court resolves the relevant issue, but not more than for two months.”
From the content of the constitutional complaint and the materials attached to it, it appears that Dmytro Havryliuk has the procedural status of an accused in criminal proceedings and the precautionary measure in the form of detention without determining the amount of bail has been imposed on him.
The court of the first instance extended detention term of Dmytro Havryliuk by the ruling dated December 27, 2023 until February 24, 2024 inclusively; and by the ruling dated February 14, 2024 until the date of the sentence in the case, but not longer than 60 days.
In its ruling dated March 15, 2024, a court of appeal dismissed the appellate complaint of the accused Dmytro Havryliuk and upheld the ruling of the court of first instance dated February 14, 2024, noting, in particular, that the arguments of the respective appellate complaint were “unjustified, since the term of the precautionary measure was extended under Article 615.6 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, which is not identical to the court decision to extend the detention of a person at the stage of the criminal proceedings”.
The author of the petition outlines that as a result of the application of Article 615.6 of the Code in the court decisions in his case, “the guarantees provided by the Constitution of Ukraine are irreparably violated, in particular, the right to liberty and inviolability of person, the principle of the rule of law, the guarantee that human rights and freedoms and their guarantees determine the content and directivity of the state, the guarantee of protection of human and citizen’s rights and freedoms by the court, independence and inviolability of the court, equality of all participants in the judicial proceeding before the law and the court.”
According to Dmytro Havryliuk, “the impugned provision leads to the loss of control over the person’s imprisonment, inasmuch as judges do not consider the details and extend the precautionary measure automatically.” The applicant also believes that “the provision of the impugned norm does not provide for the court to examine the circumstances of the existence of risks of obstructing the investigation or avoiding criminal liability and the availability of guarantees of the person’s attendance at the court session. Hence, a person is held in custody without a reasoned court decision, i.e. the decision to hold a person in custody does not require justification by the court.”
The Second Senate examined the case files in the public part of the plenary session and proceeded to the in-camera part for a decision.
The plenary session was attended by a representative of the subject of the right to a constitutional complaint, lawyer Oleksandr Shadrin.
The video recording of the public part of the plenary session is available on the official website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in the Section “Archive of video broadcasts of the sessions”.
