Review

Amnesty as legal institute was influenced significantly by to the process of harmonization of the Ukrainian law with EU Legislation. Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine adopted in 2011 and 2014 changed the legal grounds for amnesty application. Adoption of the new Criminal Proceeding Code changed the criminal judicial rules, it exposed a number theoretical and practical issues on understanding and implementing of the institute, which require scientific grounding and resolving. In the same time, the criminal proceeding rules are not envisaged into the separate law. Thus different legal acts read different elements of the procedure, which makes amnesty application more complicated.

The purpose of the article is criminal proceeding rules on amnesty application in Ukraine analysis providing, and identification the list of legal facts (issues) to be addressed by the court in the course of considering the application of amnesty.

The author analyzed the procedural procedure for the exemption from serving the sentence on the basis of the Law on Amnesty, identified the key problems related to the implementation of the amnesty and formed proposals for their solution.

The procedural procedure for the use of amnesty by the author is divided into several stages: the initiation of the issue of release from punishment in connection with the amnesty; Consideration of an amnesty sentence; review the decision if it is appealed The prerequisite for its application is always the entry into force of the Law on Amnesty, which defines the category of persons, time, grounds for application and other peculiarities of amnesty.

In considering this issue, it is for the court to ascertain the following circumstances: whether an authorized person has filed a petition (motion) for release from punishment in connection with an amnesty; whether all necessary documents have been added to the request (submission) to resolve the issue. If not, the court must determine what documents and who should be required; whether the person is included in the list of persons to whom the amnesty may be applied (including whether the person is included in the list of persons referred to in Article 4 of the Law of Ukraine "On the application of amnesty in Ukraine" or other categories of persons designated by special amnesty laws); whether there are grounds for application to the person of amnesty set out in the special law on the announcement of amnesty, including what are the circumstances and what documents they are confirmed; whether the person objects to the use of amnesty; as well as the presence or absence of grounds preventing the application of amnesty to a person.

On the basis of the conducted research the author concludes that the procedural procedure of general amnesty is not explicitly stipulated in any legislative act, and different laws define separately different elements of the procedure. This approach does not contribute to the effective regulation of this issue and may also cause problems with amnesty. Therefore, in order to resolve this issue, it is proposed to establish at the legislative level the general procedure for the use of amnesty in a separate law (including possibly in the CPC of Ukraine), and to determine only specific features of its application for each case by special laws on amnesty.

Key words: criminal proceedings, release from punishment, amnesty.