Tigran Sahakyan, Chairman of the RA Criminal Court of Appeal submitted his resignation letter a few days ago.
Advocate Inessa Petrosyan says that during his tenure the advocates consistently complained about the court’s activities. “In general, this Court seems to have intended to carry out two functions: cancel the acquittal judicial acts and meet the claims submitted by the prosecution. If a judge tried to reject the measure of restraint and meet the motion on bail, the Criminal Court of Appeal usually cancel them.”
However, advocate Arthur Grigoryan is of contrary opinion. “I have been knowing Mr. Sahakyan for a long time and have only positive impressions. We cannot talk about ideal situation as of today, especially when speaking about the executive positions. It has a number of explanations, one of them is the fact that our country is in development stage yet and there are still serious problems to solve. In other words they depend on each other,” our interlocutor said.
The advocates’ opinions on the former Chairman of the Court are different, but they have similar approach towards the possible candidates.
The media is circulated the name of the judge of the same court Ruben Rshtuni as the possible candidate.
“This is already nearly a year that two of our best judges Vazgen Rshtuni and Mkhitar Papoyan have come to the Criminal Court of Appeal. Everyone saw that this team which they two formed was the only team of our hope, because obviously the situation has changed,” advocate Inessa Petrosyan said. In her opinion, there were a lot of judicial acts thanks to this team. “Even if monitoring is carried out, we can see that there are judges who did not have any acquittal act throughout their activity. So the lawyers always tried to act so that their cases appear in the proceeding of these judges. Otherwise there was not even a wish to go to the Criminal Court of Appeal as the advocates did not believe in it.”
So the advocate believes that Vazgen Rshtuni’s appointed will lead to serious change of the situation in the Court. “That is in addition to this team, I think the other judges would also understand that they have entered the system not for the purpose to fulfil orders but to execute justice. I think the advocates will begin to believe in this court as well,” she said.
Advocate Arthur Grigoryan said that Vazgen Rshtuni had examined a case where he replaced the detention which was chosen as measure of restraint against his clients with bail. “This decision is important not as the fact that the judge granted my motion, but by the fact that Mr. Rshtuni fulfilled the requirement of the European Convention for the specific situation. Today we lack judges who have tendency to take bold steps, and I believe that he will fill this gap if he is elected the Chairman of the Criminal Court of Appeal,” said the advocate hoping that if he is appointed to this position, he will continue the same policy.
Gevorg Tosunyan
