Using Special Knowledge: History, Status and Prospects of Development

Abstract

The authors use normative sources to examine the history of the emergence and development of special knowledge in Russia, starting with the Decree of March 6, 1699 “On the Order of Investigating Signatures in Servitude Acts …”, and ending with the current legislation. Special knowledge is understood as systematized scientific knowledge and skills in the fields of science, technology, art or craft (with the exception of any knowledge in the field of law), a product of purposeful professional training and practical experience, used for collecting and examining evidence with the goal of establishing circumstances to be proven in a criminal case. The division of special knowledge into procedural and non-procedural is examined. The procedural forms of using special knowledge are further analyzed as those having evidentiary significance, namely: immediate use of special knowledge by the investigator himself; involving a specialist in investigatory actions; report and evidence of an expert; report and evidence of a specialist. Special attention is paid to the expert’s report as the key historical form, and the specialist’s report, whom the will of the lawmaker made a competitor of the former. It is noted that at the stage of preliminary investigation this competition favors the expert’s report, as, contrary to the specialist’s report, the law has provisions for the situations when the expertise is obligatory, and the expert is liable for false evidence, which is not the case with the specialist’s report; the expert has a right to conduct instrumental research, often involving partial or complete destruction or modification of objects, or changes to their appearance or key features, which is not typical for the specialist, since the specialist’s report is a written representation of his opinion on the questions posed before him by the sides; the form of the expert’s report is regulated by normative legal acts in detail, while there are no such regulations the specialist’s report. The authors analyze the prospects of using special knowledge: bringing the research process as close to the crime scene as possible, which it was suggested to call “field criminalistics”; using new research methods, researching new objects, mainly through the application of computer- and nano-technologies, as well as genomic objects; the objectivation of the testimonies of criminal proceeding’s participants, specifically, detecting lies by scanning their brains with classic magnetic resonance imaging after an effective prohibition of psycho-physiological examination with a polygraph.