The RA Law on making amendments in the RA Criminal Code came into effect on May 25, 2011. According to point 1 of article 4 of the above law, an amendment was made in article 59 of the RA Criminal Code defining the maximum term for punishment for a certain time imprisonment for 20 years instead of former 15 years.

Before the above law was adopted, the RA Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan mentioned in one of his interviews that in our criminal punitive policy the difference between the maximum term of imprisonment and life sentence was in disproportion - if not 15 years, then life sentence. Today we already have 99 life sentenced convicts which is quite a big figure.

According to the Prosecutor General in many cases [the judges] could not individualize the sentence, apply punishment adequate to the person of the criminal and the degree of his danger for the society. According to Hovsepyan, the change was in line with international experience and, in his opinion, also interests of convicts. He expressed an opinion that life sentence would really become the most severe punishment intended fot the criminals whose correction otherwise would be considered impossible.      

Responding to a question, Sona Truzyan, speaker of the RA Prosecutor General Office, said that the Prosecutor General Office made a proposal to raise the current punishment for certain crimes from 15 years and life sentence to 20 years and life sentence, because there are cases when 15 years is a mild penalty, and life sentence is a severe one.

Analyzing the substantiations and arguments presented by the Prosecutor General Office, it becomes clear that the above mentioned amendment also pursues an objective to reduce in the future the number of life imprisoned convicts and apply life imprisonment more rarely making it really the most severe punishment.

According to part 2 of article 6 of the former RA Criminal Code, the law eliminating punishment for the action or mitigating the punishment has a retroactive effect. In this respect the acting RA Criminal Code went even further and defined by point 1 of article 13 that the law eliminating the punishment for the action, mitigating the punishment or otherwise improving the state of the person who committed a crime has retroactive effect, i.e. it applies to people who committed appropriate actions before the above law came into effect including those who serve the punishment or have served it but have a conviction.

Raising the maximum imprisonment term from 15 to 20 years for certain term imprisonments formally makes the law more severe. However, it has to be noted that it is more severe only in case of imprisonment for certain term and is absolutely different from the viewpoint of life imprisonment.

Mitigation does not mean only reducing the term of the punishment. In that logic what could be the mitigation for life sentence? As mentioned above, unlike the former criminal code, the current criminal code has defined more clearly that the law otherwise improving the state of the person also has a retroactive effect. This implies that any legislative amendment that stipulates any kind of mitigation, should have a retroactive effect. 

Summing up the abovesaid, we can state that in case of life sentenced convicts the new law is an improvement (something that the Prosecutor General had hinted). After all, in substantiating the amendments it is mentioned that often 15 years is a mild and life sentence is a severe one. So subsequently if in the past for the same action someone could have been sentenced to life imprisonment, after adopting the new law he might be sentenced to 15-20 years of imprisonment.

Thus it means that if the convicts, who served their sentence for years, had been convicted after the above amendments of the Crimnal Code, some of them could have not get life sentence, i.e. for life imprisoned convicts this clause of the law is a mitigating factor and it should have a retroactive effect.

Robert Revazyan

Lawyer, Armenian Helsinki Committee

Source: www.hra.am