ONLINE TRIAL - THE NEW POSSIBILITY OF ORGANIZING HEARINGS IN CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Abstract

The application of advanced information and communication technologies in democratic justice systems is the new reality of the 21st century.We live in a time when the most complicated surgical procedures are performed with the help of computer technology, and remote trials via videoconference (online) are a necessity and established practice in court proceedings in many countries due to spatial distance, migration movements, and the cost-effectiveness of conducting proceedings.Online trials are a component of the right to a fair trial guaranteed by numerous international instruments. However, the traditional, formal legal way of administering justice in court proceedings, which is a representative model in countries like the Republic of North Macedonia, is justifiably not immediately correlated with the digitalization of the judiciary and online trials as its segment. This form of trial is not explicitly provided for the civil procedural legislation. In conditions of health crisis and enhanced protection measures when the state was dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, online trials were first introduced as one of the ways to adapt the legal system in order to provide efficient and high-quality judicial protection in specific working conditions.The problem of organizing trials was particularly pronounced in criminal proceedings and detention cases due to the urgency of the proceedings in which there was an immediate health risk for the participants in the proceedings. Online trials were only a temporary solution. With the lifting of the state of emergency, criminal trials were fully normalized.In practice, the pandemic served as a kind of indicator of the readiness and level of use of information technology in court proceedings in general on the transition path towards successful digitalization of justice.On the other hand, the opinions of the legal profession on online trials remained the most fierce in terms of the constitutionality and legality of this practice, but also the potential violation of the human rights of suspects and defendants, as well as the way in which online trials will ensure the principles of immediacy and publicity.Hence, the author will attempt, in his subject focus of the research, to define online trial, the way in which this possibility was used in the Macedonian judiciary, and also the national legislative solutions that regulate the use of technology for the transmission of image and sound in criminal proceedings, political measures in times of crisis,relevant international principles and standards, including some of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, experiences from their application during the state of emergency with comparative examples from other countries regarding the manner of organizing online trials and the views of legal professionals.For this purpose, an analysis and review of the normative solutions in domestic procedural law will be carried out, all available data obtained by the civil sector during the observation of criminal court proceedings, as well as comparative experiences from the practices of online trials in jurisdictions from countries in the region.