During the discussion titled “The problems of people sentenced to life imprisonment in Armenia” organized by the Helsinki Committee of Armenia, nearly 30 representatives signed a declaration directed to RA authorities. According to it: “The judicial system of Armenia is being refined for nearly 19 years, but there is no precedent of reviewing the cases of persons sentenced to life imprisonment in the judicial “biography” of Armenia. Many developed countries in the world, where the judicial and justice systems are continuously being refined, accept the possibility of judicial errors, they review the criminal cases of people sentenced to life imprisonment. Thus, only in the last ten years, 260 prisoners were released at the result of DNA test, as well as the reopening of cases in the United States, and 170 of them were sentenced to death penalty. There are cases when the person, being in prison for 20 years, who was convicted based on testimony of witnesses, was recognized absolutely innocent. In many countries of the world, the reason and the goal of the abolishment of death penalty was that they had the possibility to review the cases of detainees in case of long-term and life imprisonments. Although the death penalty is abolished in Armenia too but an institute for reviewing criminal cases has not been founded in Armenia yet. There are 99 people sentenced to life imprisonment in Armenia, 42 of them are those who were sentenced to death formerly. Naturally, these cases were examined in 1991 – 2003, in the first decade of existence of new independent Armenia. The judicial system is immature both now and in the past and it was nearly impossible to avoid the legal gaps and mistakes in that period. However, even today neither DNA test, nor other variants of reviewing cases is applied in our country. We, the participants of the round table of “The problems of people sentenced to life imprisonment in Armenia” call for RA authorities to found an institute for reviewing cases of people sentenced to life imprisonment, thus to contribute to the solution of this Gordian knot which exists already 20 years”.

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