THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AND THE APPROACH OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

Death penalty is one of the most controversial issues in the legal order of Russian Federation. According to Article 20 which regulate right to life of the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation “…Capital punishment until its complete abolition may be established by federal law as an exclusive form of punishment for particularly grave crimes against life, and the accused shall be granted the right to have his case examined by a court with the participation of a jury”. Thus, the constitution regards the death penalty as a temporary measure until its full abolition and provides, in Article 20/2, that every suspect threatened with the death penalty has the right to jury trial. The Russian Federation joined the Council of Europe in 1996 and signed the Protocol No.6 to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), prohibiting the death penalty in peace time on 16 April 1997. On joinning the Council of Europe, Russia through a commitment to establish a moratorium to abolish the death penalty and judicial reforms in criminal law has undertaken initiatives to fulfill its obligations arising from membership . Until now, debate on the death penalty has been accumulated in two main grounds. The First relates to the decision of the Constitutional Court in 1999 on that the death penalty can not be imposed in Russia until jury trial is guaranteed in entire constitutional constituent units. Latter relates to termination of practices leading to inequality between man and women and violate the prohibition of discrimination with respect to the death penalty in practice. In this study, death penalty in the Russian Federation; will be dealt with the context of the obligations arising from the relations of the Russian Federation with the Council of Europe and the context of the Constitutional Court's approach to the subject