THE ISSUES AND PRINCIPLES TO BE CONSIDERED IN CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION AND TRIAL FILES
1-) Three statements of the suspect are very important. The law enforcement statement, the prosecution statement (sometimes the law enforcement statement may be sufficient) and the interrogation statement given at the Court of First Instance. Utmost care must be taken to ensure that all three statements are given with the support and supervision of a lawyer.
2-) The most important of these three statements is the first statement. This statement constitutes the touchstone of the entire trial. Even if the statement is changed afterwards, it will not be fully credible. The saying “He who tells the truth at the police station, is confused in court” is an artifact and indicator of this. Therefore, the first statement should not be given without the legal support of a lawyer as much as possible.
3-) While providing legal support, the defense lawyer should obtain the whole incident from the suspect, down to the finest detail, and if he/she has not yet been caught, he/she should also obtain his/her own written statement in addition to the verbal statement. If the suspect has a history of different events, instead of telling the facts and asking for legal support, he/she may want to construct the fiction himself/herself and direct the lawyer according to this fiction. In this case, subsequent developments may put the suspect in a more difficult situation, and may even cause him/her to be held responsible for acts he/she did not commit, or even if the act is the same, he/she may be deprived of favorable provisions such as mitigating circumstances and effective remorse. The true story of the incident is therefore very important.
4-) In this direction, the lawyer should determine what his/her client is accused of and the available evidence, take note of all the issues that may be evidence in the incident, if necessary, consult the opinions of the crime scene investigation and evidence collection expert, formulate the research requests that he/she thinks should be made on these issues and build the incident fiction accordingly.
5-) The statement to be given by the suspect should contain short, concise and clear statements to include witnesses and evidence, and unnecessary narratives should not be included. Because unnecessary narratives may distract from the essence of the event in the process and cause new questions that may be different suspects.
6-) If there is a confidentiality order on the file, according to the suspect’s statements, the lawyer should provide legal support to the statement in line with the fiction of the event, provide the issues and documents that can be legally obtained in the file, and ensure that the issues that can be objective evidence – crime scene investigation, autopsy, eyewitness and identification report, crime scene investigation reports, etc. – are brought to the file.
7-) In relation to the matters mentioned in the suspect’s statement, he/she must submit his/her requests for hearing the witnesses of the incident and other research requests (HTZS/BAZ, MOBESE, PTS records, video recordings, audio analysis, data recovery, graphological examination, digital material examination, shooting residues, autopsy report, discovery, etc.) as a whole from the very beginning.
😎 In line with the new documents in the file, new research requests should be requested without delay.
9-) If he/she thinks that there are crimes or offenses subject to the issuance of a KYOK Decision, the application of prepayment provisions or reconciliation according to the state of the evidence, he/she should also notify the Investigation Authority.
10-) With the emergence of the indictment and the opening of the case, since the confidentiality order will be lifted, the lawyer should reshape the first defense of his client, who will now have the status of defendant, over the whole file, update the research requests again and request these requests from the Court at the first hearing.
11-) If there is a possibility of arrest, the lawyer should submit to the investigating authority/investigating judge the issues that may be data about him/her (having a fixed residence, coming with his/her own consent, not having the possibility of fleeing, having to provide for the household, report information of elderly and needy people from his/her family, reports showing his/her illness status) together with the documents.
12-) The lawyer, in fact, directs the shaping of the file in the investigation and trial with these research requests and event fiction and facilitates the work of the Prosecution and the Trial Authority.
13-) However, due to the fact that the request for investigation, which may be evidence in the investigation and trial phases, requires technical and specialized knowledge, it is often not fully requested or remains incomplete or inaccurate due to not knowing / not knowing what kind of evidence may be formed.
14-) Due to this lack of awareness, unfortunately, it is still a very rare practice for lawyers to submit expert and specialized reports in advance. The most common way is to obtain a legal opinion from an academic with an academic title and submit it to the file.
15-) For these reasons, research requests are usually requested from the relevant authorities and they are expected to decide accordingly. However, since the technical explanation is not/cannot be fully explained and enlightening information on its necessity is not/cannot be provided, it may be rejected by the Prosecutor’s Office/Court on the grounds that it will not add anything different to the investigation/trial.
16-) In this respect, it should be common practice for lawyers to request a new official expert and expert report by submitting an expert and expert report in advance.
17-) Professional Law Offices, which are aware of this, should be aware of the fact that the departments such as Criminal, Civil, Commercial, International Arbitration, Enforcement, Copyrights, etc.