Rights for Russians

last updated 8 January 2015

Moscow

Russia got a new criminal code this week that finally does away with the summary justice of the Soviet era. The old code, written in 1960 under Nikita Krushchev, presumed a suspect’s guilt from the moment of arrest. The judge’s role was to work with the prosecutors, not as an objective arbiter, and the conviction rate was more than 90 percent. Now Russians are entitled to hear the charges against them promptly and to appear in court with a defense attorney. President Vladimir Putin has pushed aggressively for a Western-style justice system as part of his plan to create “a dictatorship of law.”