Peteris Dzalbe, the Chair of the Department of Criminal Cases of the Senate, in his report on work of the department last year, indicated three main directions stated when he undertook management of the department in 2011: improvement of quality of the Senate’s rulings; continuing education of senators and improvement of cooperation with scientists in field of national criminal law and criminal procedure, when solving problems of legal nature.

P.Dzalbe pointed out those issues of criminal law and criminal procedure, in which the Department of Criminal Cases of the Senate expressed significant conclusions, when reviewing cases in cassation instance: for example, on perception of document in criminal law, compensation of injury in criminal proceedings; perception of material injury in criminal law, refusal to maintain up prosecution and other conclusions of the Senate expressed in court rulings altered and quashed, are summarised and sent to regional courts and district (city) courts, as well as to Latvian Judicial Training Centre.

As courts’, inter alia, the work of cassation instance, is closely related with work of prosecutor’s office, the Chair of the Department turned to opinion of Eriks Kalnmeiers, the Prosecutor General, expressed at the annual meeting of prosecutor’s office, on liberal penalties to creators of so called money laundering schemes. P.Dzalbe indicated that investigating officers and prosecutors in pre-trial criminal proceedings also do not have uniform opinion and practice, and in actual circumstances compared different charges are brought against persons and it results in different court judgments.  

36 cases or 5% of cases reviewed in the Department of Criminal Casees of the Senate were about criminal offences in national economy, including cases on tax evasion and legalisation of proceeds of crime. At present, senator study these cases in details working upon creation of uniform case-law, which is not easy task, but it is doable, stressed the Chair of the department.

Case law study has also been started in cases, in which appellate and cassation protests were submitted, and quality of prosecutors’ protests will also be analysed, as well as prosecutors’ opinions submitted in case according to request of the Senate. The Chair of the Department stresses that prosecutors should turn attention also to those cases, when court rulings are quashed or altered due to complaints of accused, advocates or victims related to violations of Criminal Law or significant violations of Criminal Procedure Law, when reviewing cases, as it is prosecutor’s duty to appeal against court rulings, if they are not legal and grounded.  As well, there are cases, in which prosecutors bring obviously unreasoned protests.

The Chair of the Depaertment of the Senate turned attention to the fact that courts of all levels need to improve communication with society, not avoiding giving information, as bad or incomplete information about cases reviewed often causes misunderstanding or miscomprehension about courts’ work.

P.Dzalbe projected that year 2012 will not be easier than previous one for the Department, as considerably more cases were received during first months, comparing with the same period of last year. It is necessary to extend composition of the department with the sixth senator, as statistical data for 2011 shows that one senator of the Department of Cirminal Cases of the Senate had 138 cases reviewed last year already.

In 2011, the Departmnet of Criminal Cases received 726 cases, 957 cases were reviewed, and number of cases pending at the end of the year was 55 cases. 

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, the Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: 67020396, 28652211