ADMINISTRATIVE OFFENCE CASES SPECIFICS OF CONSIDERATION OF CASES ON ADMINISTRATIVE OFFENCES Despite the fact that the Code of Administrative Offences does not regulate the procedure for consideration of those cases in first instance courts and courts of appeal in much detail, in practice the review of these cases in courts of appeal takes place in adherence to the general adjudication standards. As per the first instance – the judge conducted the hearings impeccably only in every third case. At the same time, certain procedural offences by the judges of courts of appeal were detected. In every fifth administrative offence case considered by the courts of appeal, the court did not explain the rights of the participants of the trial, including the right to demand the recusal of a judge. The situation with the consideration of cases on administrative offences in first instance courts is worse compared to the courts of appeal. Almost half of the hearings in first instance courts took place in the judges’ chambers, and the judges often did not use the symbols of the judiciary (the robe, the badge and the state flag). The findings of the monitoring showed that the judges in those cases often turned them into a “friendly meeting”, “discussion”, “chat”, etc. – they did not announce the composition of the court and the content of the case being considered; they do not inform the participants of their rights and do not study the evidence on file with the case. There were cases when in the judges’ chambers with open doors the visitors interrupted the consideration of the case with their business and questions, the consideration of the case was accompanied by radio music, the judge got distracted by phone calls all the time, etc. In one of the cases the judge offered the accused to choose the punishment that he himself believed would be appropriate in view of the offence. In the course of the monitoring it was established that the protocol on the administrative offence is the main document considered by the court, and it becomes the grounds for invoking administrative responsibility. There were only four cases in the first instance court when the witnesses were heard. However, in all those cases the judges breached the rules for interrogating the witnesses – they were not informed of responsibility for false testimony and were not removed from the courtroom before interrogation. The attitude of the judges to this type of cases may be described by a quote of one of the judges made to the monitor, “these cases are not interesting for visitors, these are just administrative offences”. In 8 out of 10 cases the first instance court took the side of administrative bodies when deciding the case. Thus, the judges mostly supported the opinion of administrative bodies stated in the protocol on the administrative offence. When they did not take the side of the authorities, they usually closed the case due to the expiration of terms for bringing to justice for an administrative offence. At the same time, in courts only each fourth case was decided in favour of the administrative bodies. In other cases the courts of appeal usually cancelled the judgements of first instance courts and found that the plaintiffs did not commit administrative offences. When evaluating these figures it is worth noting that the right to appeal in administrative offence cases is given only to those persons who were brought to justice, the victims, and, in exceptional cases, the prosecutors. In case the administrative bodies were allowed to lodge appeal, the number of reversed judgements could have been higher. Report on the findings of the first trial monitoring programme in Ukraine 55