The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation

The Supreme Court is interested in questions that go beyond one case: where a lower court has departed from the Court's own Plenum guidance, where two cassation courts have decided the same question differently, where an article of the Criminal Code has been applied in a way that stretches its text, where the rules on combining sentences or on counting time in detention have been applied wrongly.

Complaints that succeed cite the Court's own material — Plenum resolutions, published Reviews of Judicial Practice, decisions of its collegia in comparable cases. Complaints that fail describe the injustice done to the defendant in general terms. We draft to the first pattern.

An unglamorous but productive category. Time spent in a pre-trial detention centre counts towards the sentence at different rates depending on the regime of the facility the person is sent to, under Article 72 of the Criminal Code as amended in 2018. Sentences for multiple offences and multiple verdicts are combined under Articles 69 and 70 according to rules that are frequently misapplied. Reductions required by Article 62 where there was a co-operation agreement, or by Article 65 after a jury finding of leniency, are sometimes simply not made.

These errors are arithmetic, they are visible on the face of the verdict, and cassation courts correct them. Where they exist they are often the surest route to a reduction.

A refusal by a single judge to refer the complaint is not automatically the end. Under Article 401.11 the Chairman of the Supreme Court or a deputy may disagree with that refusal and refer the case themselves. That is a separate application with its own logic and it is dealt with on the complaint to the Chairman page.