The victim in the Romanian criminal trial

Autor: Mircea DAMASCHIN
Publicat în: Challenges of the Knowledge Society 2018
Disponibil online: aici.
Abstract: When drafting the new Criminal Procedure Code (nRCPC), the Romanian legislator chose to reassign the procedural roles, that is to reduce the number of parties from four (the accused, the injured party, the civil party and the party with civil liability) to three (the defendant, the civil party and the party with civil liability). Thus, the person who has suffered physical, material or moral injury while the offense was being committed can no longer attend the criminal proceedings as a party, as he has the capacity of victim – a main procedural subject. Apparently, this change does not entail the reduction of the procedural rights. Thus, according to art 33. para.(2) nRCPC, the main procedural subjects have the same rights and obligations as do parties, except for those rights that the law grants to them exclusively. Nevertheless, as we will see, we will identify numerous procedural hypotheses in which the victim, stricto sensu, does not have the legal possibility to exercise certain procedural rights, accessible to other parties.
Keywords: victim; parties in criminal proceedings; main procedural subjects; equality of arms; new Romanian Criminal Procedure Code.