Restricting the Criminal Judge to the Preliminary Investigation

There is no doubt that the criminal judge enjoys wide discretion when weighing the evidence and in determining the extent of its strength when forming his certain conviction, whether it is related to the evidence concluded by the indictment authority or what was raised before the court in the case before him. However, the reader of the legal texts he cited The Palestinian legislator in procedural law, when discussing the criminal judge's freedom of persuasion, notices its generality and lack of a general framework that shows the limits of that freedom that the judge enjoys and relies on it in his search for the factual truth of the criminal case. The authenticity of the case papers referred to the court, of which the preliminary investigation records are an essential part. From here, the main problem of the study arose, which centered on whether the records of the primary investigation could restrict the criminal judge to the inevitability of adopting it, and whether it is suitable to form a basis that suffices him alone in issuing his judgment. After conducting a comparative and analytical study of the texts of the relevant Palestinian and Lebanese laws, it appears that some preliminary investigation procedures may constitute a total restriction on the criminal judge's freedom of conviction, especially if the conditions for their validity are met. In convicting the accused, if the Public Prosecution provides evidence of the circumstances in which he was accepted and the court is convinced that it was issued voluntarily and voluntarily, which means that the judge's freedom is related to researching the extent to which the conditions for the validity of the confession are met, and if they are available, he must adopt it. Likewise, it is not always correct to say that the court is the supreme expert in the case, because if the judge assesses the necessity of resorting to expertise in technical or technical issues that are beyond the scope of his knowledge and understanding, then this is considered an admission of his necessity, and his departure from its results at the time or deviance from resorting to it. It is a departure from the logical and scientific method in its ruling, which is confirmed by many decisions issued by the Palestinian and Egyptian Courts of Cassation