Legal issue: 1) the constitutionality of exemption of certain categories of crimes committed by minors from the jurisdiction of court with participation of jurors; 2) the constitutionality of denying a minor of the right to the jury trial, given that his motion to that effect has been submitted prior than the law, which had exempted from juror’s jurisdiction the crimes he was indicted for, came into force.
Ratio decidendi: the contested amendments to the legislation conform to the Constitution, since determining the categories of crimes which may be submitted to jury trial falls within an exclusive competence of the federal legislator. Although jury trial as a form of consideration of a criminal case does not exclude, as a matter of principle, the confidentiality of proceedings, the conditions for its realization are still better ensured by a narrow panel of judges, whose professional status implies more delicate attitude to the information which non-dissemination (for instance, in connection with sexual crimes) would, supposedly, be of importance not only for the accused but also for the victims. Proceeding from this and taking into account the peculiarities of criminal proceedings with regard to persons who by the moment of committing crimes have not yet achieved the age of 18, the exemption of such criminal cases from the jurisdiction of jurors – taking into account that by law neither death sentence nor life-long imprisonment may be applied to minors – does not deteriorate their position from the point of view of constitutional guarantees of judicial protection. Besides, in the present case the legislator, having exempted certain criminal cases from jurisdiction of jurors, conferred at the same time upon the accused the right to request consideration of their case in the court of first instance by a panel of three judges instead of one, and also extended to them the ordinary procedure of appellation and expanded the rights of appellation courts in the event of retrial. Therefore, in the present case such exemption may not be regarded as deteriorating the position of minors. As for the moment of realisation of their right to jury trial, this issue is regulated by rules being in force at the moment of court’s acceptance of the case and not at the moment of submission of motion; any other interpretation would violate the rules concerning the temporal effects of legislation and besides would not conform to the constitutional principle of lawful court.
