The article is devoted to the analysis of the stances developed in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the content, scope, general principles of ensuring the right of access to justice, and permissible limits applied to restrict the right in question. The author has substantiated the conclusion that the European Court of Human Rights associates access to justice with Paragraph 1 of Article 6 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Thus, the concept of access to justice includes a number of elements: the right to have recourse to court; the right to have a case heard and resolved in compliance with the requirements of a fair trial; the right to have the judgment enforced; the set of safeguards that allow the person to exercise the rights under consideration effectively. According to the European Court of Human Rights, access to justice should be ensured at all stages including pre-trial (criminal) proceedings and reviewing of court decisions by higher courts. However, the right of access to justice is not absolute. The restrictions imposed must have a legitimate purpose and reasonable proportionality must be obtained between the means used and the goal determined. In view of the requirement mentioned above, the national legislation may provide for the particularities of application of Paragraph 1 of Article 6 of the Convention to proceedings in different types of courts and at different stages, for example, by establishing a certain procedure for the court to grant individuals the right to appeal to a higher court. The author has demonstrated the main directions of applying the legal stances of the European Court of Human Rights regarding access to justice to improve the Russian criminal procedural legislation and law enforcement practices, as well as for further scientific research.

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The paper shows that ensuring access to justice is enshrined in the constitutions of most UN member states. The specificity of the Russian constitutional norm lies in the fact that ensuring access to justice for victims of crimes is imposed on the state as its duty. In criminal proceedings, this obligation is realized through the activities of the preliminary investigation bodies, the prosecutor, and the court. The author proposes measures aimed at building pre-trial proceedings that effectively ensure access to justice: refusal from the stage of initiation of a criminal case and indicating the preliminary investigation from the moment of registration of a crime report; empowering the prosecutor to initiate criminal proceedings, direct investigations and bring charges; expansion of judicial control in pre-trial proceedings; development of effective simplified and accelerated procedures in preliminary production; supplementing the grounds for termination of a criminal case, criminal prosecution by the inexpediency of criminal prosecution. It is shown that the introduction of digital technologies in the criminal process, including the establishment of digital interaction between state bodies and the population through a single secure digital online platform, should become an independent direction for improving pre-trial proceedings; creation of a mechanism for filing a crime report through a special online service; automatic registration of applications and determination of the direction of their movement using the capabilities of artificial intelligence; introduction of an electronic criminal case; use of semantic neural networks, computer vision, data clustering, etc. in the criminal process.

The article shows the main models of building pre-trial proceedings in the Russian Federation and foreign countries, analyzes the provision of access to justice in each of the models. A number of measures have been proposed to build pre-trial proceedings in criminal cases that effectively ensure access to justice, including abandoning the stage of initiating a criminal case and keeping a countdown of the preliminary investigation from the moment of registration of a crime report, conducting pre-trial cognitive activity (investigation) under the guidance of a prosecutor, and bringing charges by the prosecutor.based on the results of the investigation, granting participants who are not vested with authority the right to apply to the court to deposit evidence and to assist the court in protecting their interests in connection with the refusal of the preliminary investigation body to satisfy motions related to the process of proving, the introduction of effective simplified and accelerated procedures in pre-trial proceedings, the establishment of digital interaction between government agencies and the population through a single secure digital online platform; creation of a mechanism for filing reports of crime through a special online service integrated into the specified digital platform.

Аннотация: В статье рассматривается содержание принципа свободы оценки доказательств в уголовном судопроизводстве, анализируются два его взаимосвязанных аспекта данного: запрет внешнего вмешательства в оценочную деятельность суда, прокурора, следователя, дознавателя и одновременное предоставление им внутренней свободы оценки доказательств. Анализируются требования, предъявляемые к свободной оценке доказательств, призванные исключить принятие произвольных, необоснованных решений, включая обязанность субъектов оценки доказательств руководствоваться положениями об обязательном доказывании отдельных обстоятельств доказательствами определенного вида, о запрете на использование некоторых сведений в качестве доказательств, об освобождении от процессуальной деятельности по доказыванию общеизвестных фактов, преюдициально установленных фактов, правовых презумпций и обстоятельств, признанных сторонами, установление совести как нравственного ориентира при оценке доказательств, и др. Исследование основано на анализе отечественного уголовно-процессуального законодательства, правовых позиций Конституционного Суда РФ, Пленума Верховного Суда РФ и решений Верховного Суда РФ по конкретным уголовным делам. Автором формулируется вывод о том, что следствием свободной оценки доказательств является возможность постановления обвинительного приговора при отсутствии прямых доказательств. Формулируются предложения о дополнении УПК РФ статьей «Основания освобождения от доказывания» и включении в нее норм об освобождении от доказывания общеизвестных фактов, а также обстоятельств, признанных сторонами. Ключевые слова: Свобода оценки доказательств, принцип, уголовное судопроизводство, доказательство, внутреннее убеждение, независимость судей, полиграф, преюдиция, презумпция, общеизвестные факты. Abstract: This article examines the content of the principle of freedom of assessment of evidence in criminal procedure; two of its interconnected aspects are being analyzed: prohibition of external interference into assessment work of the court, prosecutor, investigator, detective, and at the same time allowing them internal freedom of assessment of evidence. The author analyzes the guidelines for the evidence assessment, put in place to eliminate arbitrary and unfounded decisions, which include: the duty of the subjects of evidence assessment to adhere to the positions on mandatory proof of separate circumstances by specific types of evidence; prohibition of use of certain data as evidence; on relieving from procedural work with regards to proving facts of general knowledge, prejudicially established facts, legal presumptions and circumstances admitted by both parties; setting conscience as a moral compass during assessment of evidence, etc. The author formulates the conclusion that the consequence of freedom of evidence assessment is the possibility of a guilty verdict without presence of direct evidence.