The Civil Defendant in Criminal Proceedings: persona duplex or persona simplex

Abstract

The article addresses pressing issues in contemporary law enforcement practice, the science of criminal procedure, and legal education related to defining the legal status of the civil defendant in criminal proceedings. It emphasizes that safeguarding the rights and legitimate interests of participants in criminal proceedings is a key factor in Ukraine’s advancement as a legal and sovereign state. While the guarantees for suspects, defendants, and victims have received considerable scholarly attention, the procedural status of the civil defendant remains insufficiently studied despite its normative complexity and practical significance.

The article analyzes the distinctive features of the civil defendant’s legal status in criminal proceedings, particularly in light of the widespread trend in legal literature and practice to equate this status with that of the suspect or the accused. It is stressed that such an approach contradicts the provisions of the current Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (CPC) and disrupts the procedural logic of differentiating the roles of participants in criminal proceedings. Special attention is given to the possibility of involving the state as a civil defendant, a matter that has recently provoked significant scholarly and practical debate.

Using dialectical and hermeneutical methods, the study substantiates that equating the procedural status of the civil defendant with that of the suspect or the accused is conceptually flawed. This approach contradicts the CPC and violates the legislative logic of distinguishing between the procedural roles of participants in criminal proceedings. The civil defendant in criminal proceedings is an independent procedural subject who cannot be identified with either the suspect or the accused. This is confirmed by both literal and systematic interpretation of CPC provisions (Arts. 62, 42, 128), which establish distinct legal definitions and determine the specificity of their functional responsibilities.

The civil defendant is not the object of criminal prosecution but is involved solely to resolve issues of civil liability for harm caused by the criminally unlawful actions of another person. The legislator’s use of the conjunction “or” in Art. 128 of the CPC legally fixes the alternativeness of liability subjects, which prevents their procedural conflation. At the same time, it is argued that the state cannot serve as a civil defendant in the consideration of a civil claim within criminal proceedings due to jurisdictional restrictions, the absence of an appropriate procedural status, and insufficient normative regulation.