COURTS OF DIFFERENT INSTANCES The judges of first instance courts gave the participants the possibility to get familiarized with the evidence and other documents in the case provided they filed respective motions in 93% of cases, courts of appeal – in 97%. The monitors did not register violations of this right in courts of higher level. The result of the monitoring of the criterion “absence of moral pressure on the trial participants” is quite unexpected. The relationship here is the opposite – the higher the instance, the more violations were detected: in first instance courts –2% of cases, in courts of appeal – 3%, in courts of higher level – 8%. Regarding impartiality, this requirement was observed in first and higher instance courts in 98% of cases. IMPARTIALITY AND EQUALITY IN FIRST INSTANCE COURTS 4,5 -5 0 5 IMPARTIALITY AND EQUALITY IN COURTS OF APPEAL 4,6 -5 0 5 IMPARTIALITY AND EQUALITY IN CASSATION COURTS 4,8 -5 0 5 CULTURE OF CONDUCTING THE TRIAL The monitors evaluated the general status of observance of ethical norms and communication culture both by the court and the trial participants as impeccable in 78% of cases in first instance courts, in 75% of cases in courts of appeal and in 92% of cases in courts of higher level. The highest number of cases where the judges got distracted in the course of the trial or did not pay attention to what the parties said, was observed in courts of appeal – approximately 12%. This conduct most often involved those judges who were members of panels, during the trial they often reviewed other case files or went about some other business not related to the hearing. Interestingly, there were no cases of the kind in cassation courts, while the judges of first instance courts got distracted or did not listen to the parties attentively in 7% of cases. Almost in 5% of cases in the courts of all levels the monitors noted rudeness, tactlessness, contempt to the participants of the trial or other judicial misconduct. This score is the same in courts of different instances. In addition, in approximately 5% of cases in the courts of all instances the parties or other participants of the trial demonstrated improper conduct in the course of the hearing. No specifics of this score have been established depending on the instance. Report on the findings of the first trial monitoring programme in Ukraine 39