The discretion of the court in resolving the issue of the relevance of evidence to the subject of proof

Relevance. In practice, defenders often face abuses of the court related to its discretionary powers. Thus, often the refusal to satisfy the requests of the defense to attach additional evidence to the case on the grounds of their non-relevance to the criminal case is a struggle with "inconvenient" evidence. The court has a natural desire to prevent such evidence from being included in the materials of the criminal case. This creates the technology allowed by the procedural law for filling a criminal case with materials with an accusatory bias, which grossly violates the right of a criminally prosecuted person to defense. This article is aimed at setting the problem in this part, describing its manifestations in practice and formulating ways to solve it.

Purpose: to develop methodologically sound criteria and processes that limit arbitrary judicial discretion (manipulation) in determining the relevance of evidence.

Objectives: to critically analyze the doctrinal positions and judicial practice of the courts of appeal and cassation; to identify and identify the factors and institutional prerequisites for subjectivization of the subject of evidence; to propose formalized but flexible methods for formulating the subject of evidence; and to develop proposals that ensure the requirement of reasonableness of the assessment of relevance without unnecessarily simplifying judicial assessment.

Methodology: General scientific methods of cognition such as analysis, synthesis, dialectical and systematic methods were used.

Research. The study revealed: 1) the normative abstraction of the principle of internal persuasion creates prerequisites for a lack of uniformity in evaluation activities; 2) discretion, in the absence of adequate criteria and control, can transform into a tool of procedural manipulation in resolving the issue of the relevance of evidence.

Conclusion. The lack of a unified methodology for formulating the subject of evidence leads to significant differences in the assessment of the relevance of evidence between courts. A sustained reduction in the risks of manipulation in the evidentiary process is achieved only with a combination of changes in substantive and procedural regulation, institutional regulation of examinations and digital procedures, as well as the creation of a methodological framework for participants in criminal proceedings.

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