Special Judicial Presence (специальное судебное присутствие)

Constitutional Basis

Under the 1924 USSR Constitution, the Supreme Court of the USSR could form Special Judicial Presences to hear criminal and civil cases of exceptional importance affecting two or more union republics, as well as cases against members of the Central Executive Committee (CEC), the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), the Chairman and members of the Supreme Court, and the Procurator General of the USSR. After the 1936 Constitution, they were convened by individual resolutions of the Plenum of the Supreme Court.

The December 1, 1934 Law

Adopted immediately after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, the CEC and SNK resolution "On the Procedure for Conducting Cases on the Preparation or Commission of Terrorist Acts" introduced the following amendments to the criminal procedure codes of the union republics: (1) investigation to be completed within ten days, (2) indictment served to the accused only one day before trial, (3) cases heard without the participation of either side (no prosecutor or defense counsel in the adversarial sense), (4) no cassation appeal and no petitions for pardon, (5) death sentences carried out immediately upon pronouncement. This accelerated procedure became the standard operating mode of the Special Judicial Presence throughout the Great Purge.

Major Cases

• Shakhty Trial (1928): Donbas mining engineers prosecuted for sabotage.
• Industrial Party Trial (1930): A group of technical specialists indicted as the "Industrial Party," with Andrei Vyshinsky presiding.
• Tukhachevsky Case (1937): Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven other senior Red Army commanders tried on June 11, 1937 in a single closed session on charges of belonging to an anti-Soviet Trotskyist military organization. All were sentenced to death and executed immediately.
• Kulik Case (1942): Trial of Marshal Grigory Kulik for military failures.
• Beria Case (1953): The trial of Lavrentiy Beria and fellow MVD officials after Stalin's death. This was the last case heard by a Special Judicial Presence.

Abolition

On April 19, 1956, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet annulled the December 1, 1934 law. The Special Judicial Presence itself fell into disuse thereafter. On January 31, 1957, all defendants in the Tukhachevsky case were posthumously rehabilitated for absence of corpus delicti.