AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE THEORY IN RUSSIA. Part 1. The presumption of innocence understanding in the pre-revolutionary past

This paper is the first one in a sequence of articles which focus on finding out what changes in the presumption of innocence understanding had occurred since its emergence in Russia. The current essay is mainly connected with the 19th-century legislation and theoretical thinking about the presumption of innocence in that age. The author comes to the following conclusions. The legislation of the Russian Empire did not contain an article enshrining the presumption of innocence. Although the criminal process theory acknowledged the presumption of innocence, the word «presumption» was hardly used. The doctrine allowed the results of pre-trial investigation to be based on probability; however, this contradicted Art. 265 of the Criminal Procedure Statute of 1864, according to which a judicial investigator was obliged to determine all significant circumstances of a criminal event. Theoretical ideas about the presumption of innocence in fact implied another maxim, namely «Only a court of law may try and convict a person for a criminal offence». No one considered the presumption of innocence as a principle.