Inside Police Custody 2 A.5 Lithuania – Conclusions and Recommendations Major issues The legal framework in Lithuania complies with the basic standards of suspects’ procedural rights enshrined in the EU directives. Guarantees of the fundamental procedural rights in criminal proceedings arise from the Constitution and are outlined in detail in the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code. Suspects and accused persons are guaranteed the right to interpretation and translation, including, where necessary, interpretation of the communication with their lawyer. All suspects must be provided written information about their procedural rights, including the possibility to receive legal aid. The Criminal Procedure Code provides for an active role of a defence lawyer, establishing not only the right but also the obligation to use all legal means of defence. Suspects under arrest have the right to inform a family member or a close relative about the arrest, as well as to notify him/her personally. In some respects, national laws establish a higher standard of procedural rights than the minimum required by the directives, i.e. the translation of the essential documents must always be made in writing and cannot be substituted with an oral translation, the letter of rights must be served to all suspects and no restrictions on the right to have a lawyer are provided. The interrogations observed and interviews with specialists in criminal law – lawyers and investigators – revealed certain good practices, as well as practical problems. Due to limited scope of research – information was collected from 54 interrogations in three different police units under of one Chief Police Commissariat – the information collected does not allow to make conclusions as to the prevalence and scale of the identified problems throughout Lithuania. However, the collected data reveals tendencies and problematic areas of practice that deserve attention. The observed interrogations, interviews with lawyers and with investigators have shown that in practice there are usually no major problems in ensuring that suspects are able to give evidence in their native language or a language they understand. Problems concerning interpretation quality are more frequent when interpretation in rarely encountered languages and (or) of complex legal language is required. Suspects are informed about the content of suspicion against them, and in most observed cases the investigators informed suspects about their right to remain silent and not to give evidence. On the other hand, in practice sometimes the rights may more be theoretical than effective. The letter of rights is written in lengthy and complex sentences, citing the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, with references to the procedures established in the Criminal Procedure Code or other laws. As observations of interrogations have shown, investigators rarely provide further explanations about the content of procedural rights, apart from listing these rights. The letter of rights is served at the beginning of the interrogation along with several other procedural documents. Thus, the procedure of informing suspects about their procedural rights often becomes more of a formality with little practical use. A more accessible version of the letter of rights is served only to persons subject to a European arrest warrant. The observed interrogations revealed that waiving a right to have a lawyer cannot be considered completely voluntary in all cases. In the absence of grounds for mandatory participation of a defence lawyer, information on the right to have a lawyer was usually provided very briefly, with the right to have 78