From a Piece of Paper to Court Evidence: The Means Of Collection and Examination of Physical Documents in Ukrainian Criminal Justice

The purpose of this article is to outline criminal procedural and forensic means of collection and examination of physical documents in Ukrainian criminal justice. The linguistic analysis, formal-legal, formal-logical, modeling, forecasting methods, as well as the praxeological approach in forensic science are used. The authors argue that a document, as a material object, must be obtained in a manner permitted by law and examined using the necessary forensic means in order to acquire evidentiary status and be suitable for use in criminal proceedings. It was established that the procedural status of a document depends on its internal and external features. If the content of the document carries evidentiary information, it is considered written evidence; if such information is carried by its external (material) features, it is physical (real) evidence. Procedural means of collecting documents are defined by Art. 93 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and differ for the parties to the proceedings. Preliminary, judicial and expert examination of documents is distinguished. The main stages of the preliminary examination of documents and the necessary technical means are described. It is emphasized that Ukrainian judges avoid using their own special knowledge when examining documents. Some features of the appointment of forensic examinations of documents and evaluation of their conclusions are highlighted. The perspective of the study of methods of using documents as evidence has been established.