Information letter On conducting psycho-physiological examinations.
Moscow City Prosecutor's Office
INFORMATION LETTER
“On conducting psycho-physiological examinations”
The intensification of the fight against crime, as well as the protection of the interests of law-abiding citizens involved in criminal proceedings, against the background of a decrease in the value of evidentiary information obtained during interrogations of defendants, witnesses and victims, due to the increasing number of cases of them changing their initial testimony, necessitate the timely introduction of new types of examinations into investigative and judicial practice.
The polygraph (“lie detector”, “bark detector”) has been used in many countries of the world for over half a century. This technical device is a combination of medical and biological devices that allow synchronously and continuously recording the dynamics of the psychophysiological reactions of the person being tested to questions asked by the polygraph examiner. The device is a passive recorder of processes occurring in the human body and does not have any reverse effect on them. A survey using a polygraph is a procedure that is harmless to the health of the person being questioned, aimed at obtaining information about an event that took place in the past.
In the Russian Federation, the polygraph is widely used by the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs both in the course of operational and investigative activities and in work with personnel. The first state forensic institution to master a new form of using specialized knowledge to assist law enforcement agencies, assist state and non-state institutions, and citizens was the Saratov Laboratory of Forensic Science of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, where polygraph surveys have been regularly conducted since 1998. Criminal cases sent to court, during the investigation of which the polygraph was used, successfully pass the trial stage.
In September 2000, for the first time in the practice of Russian legal proceedings, the senior investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the Saratov garrison attached to the materials of criminal case No. 26/13/0015-00D as documents-sources of evidence, in accordance with Article 88 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, two conclusions of a polygraph specialist of the Saratov forensic laboratory. Subsequently, the military court of the Volga Military District issued a guilty verdict in this case.
Thus, despite the absence of a single normative act governing the use of a polygraph in various areas of public life, the polygraph is currently used within the framework of the existing criminal procedure legislation, firstly, in the implementation of operational-search activities by authorized bodies (including, in the execution of a separate order of the investigator given to the inquiry bodies in the course of putting forward and developing investigative versions); secondly, in the production of forensic psychological examination.
The first case of using a polygraph in Russian investigative and judicial practice in the form of a psychophysiological examination can be considered the complex forensic psychological and psychophysiological examination conducted in the fall of 2001 as part of the investigation of criminal case No. 09/20/0005-01D.
On January 9, 2001, serviceman Ageyev A.M., knowing that at that time only twelve-year-old S. was in the apartment of his acquaintances in the town of Lobnya, Mytishchi District, Moscow Region, together with Khametov A.R., entered the apartment by deception. Ageyev began looking for money and valuables, and Khametov, having dragged the girl into one of the rooms, strangled her, using a hair tie and a cable cut from a heater. After being taken into custody, Ageyev A.M., together with servicemen Bogdanovsky A.A. and Blem N.N., escaped from the guardhouse. The Moscow District Military Court assessed the expert opinion regarding Khametov A.R., drawn up on the basis of the results of a comprehensive psychological and psychophysiological examination, together with other evidence and formed the basis for the sentence, which Khametov A.R. sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony, with confiscation of property. At the same time, the court's verdict noted that, in accordance with the conclusion of a comprehensive forensic psychological and psychophysiological examination, when Khametov was shown, among other neutral photographs, a heater from which the cable used to strangle S. was cut off, and the bed on which she was strangled, he showed significant reactions, which allows us to conclude that the latter was present in the apartment at the time of S.'s murder. Therefore, the court rejected the testimony of the defendant Khametov A.R. that he was not in the apartment at all and did not kill S., as inconsistent with the circumstances of the incident established in court.
On March 18, 2005, Kuptsov A.V., together with Fedorov-Marinushkin S.Yu., invited Mylnikova E.M. to Kuptsov A.V.'s apartment by telephone. After drinking alcohol together, Fedorov-Marinushkin S.Yu. went to bed, and Kuptsov A.V., during a sudden quarrel, stabbed Mylnikova E.M. in the chest, from which she died. The Zelenograd Administrative District Prosecutor's Office opened criminal case No. 343321 on this fact. During the investigation, investigator Bryanskaya T.V. ordered a psychophysiological examination, according to the findings of which psychophysiological reactions of Fedorov-Marinushkin S.Yu. were revealed, indicating that Fedorov-Marinushkin S.Yu. himself did not stab the victim with the knife, but saw Kuptsov A.V. throw the knife into the trash bin. The nature of the information that S. Yu. Fedorov-Marinushkin has was obtained by him at the time of the crime. The said examination was assessed in conjunction with other evidence and formed the basis for the verdict of the Zelenograd District Court of Moscow, which on June 28, 2005 convicted A. V. Kuptsov under Part 1 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Moscow City Court upheld the verdict.
Currently, employees of the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia increasingly appoint psychophysiological examinations in criminal cases. However, it is necessary to take into account that it is necessary to involve as an expert in the production of this type of examination persons who have documents confirming that they have special knowledge in the field of polygraphology.
Deputy City Prosecutor, Senior Justice Advisor M. E. Nikonov