MOSCOW, July 1 (RAPSI) - The Liberal Democratic Party has sent to the State Duma a bill designed to give the investigative authorities and courts the right to check all the circumstances of a case, including those that have been established in a res judicata decision.

They propose making the relevant amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code.

According to the current wording, "the circumstances included in the judgment or any other court decision that has become effective following civil, commercial or administrative proceedings are to be accepted by the court, the prosecutor, the investigator or the interrogating officer without additional inspection."

The legal term for this is prejudice, which implies that the facts established in a court need not be proved again and cannot be contested.

The Liberal Democrats point out that the term was introduced on January 1, 2010 and that its application leads to a host of procedural problems.

"For example, the hearing of the main case can become a mere formality where all circumstances that need to be checked are considered as established facts and cannot be reassessed. The court hearing the main case can only analyze the involvement of the other defendants in the case. Therefore, the hearing of cases based on res judicata rulings passed under a special procedure will emasculate the essence of court hearings, most notably the adversarial nature of the court system and objective assessment of the evidence," the MPs argue.