Reviewing, as an Extraordinary Mean of Appeal

Abstract

One of the fundamental rights that a subject in criminal proceedings owns, is the right to appellate a court decision, which besides the usual means of appeal in Albanian system of justice, are guaranteed also by extraordinary means of appeal as it’s reviewing a decision despites any deadline of appeal. The review is the means of appeal, which aims to strike court decisions, which have become final, with positive expectations in each case, to improve the status of the offender. In the constitutional of Albania of 1998 this institute, was not regulated explicitly, but there was foreseen as part of jurisdiction of the High Court, where clearly was put that the high court had preliminary and reviewing jurisdiction. In the framework of the Justice Reforming in 2016, the HC Was stripped of its reviewing jurisdiction. The competence to re-examine a final court decision was given to the first instance court, which can judge in these cases any type of decision that fulfils the criteria to be reviewed, despite the fact if this decision has been taken by an Appeal Court or the High Court. Undertaking legal changes in constitute and Code of Criminal Procedure for this institute came as response/regarding to the legal vacuum found in Albanian system of justice as well as the contractual practice with the ECHR, established by the Albanian court. The Albanian system did not have the effective means to guarantee the right to a fair legal process, the implementation of which has been ascertained by the ECHR in some of the decisions given against Albania as (Xheraj vs Albania; Lika vs Albania etc.). Because of that, in the CPC, become larger the number of cases, when the re-examining of this type of court decision could be done. The purpose of this article is to present in a comparative form the institute of reviewing court decisions; it aims to prescribe how this mean of appeal was and how it is now after the reform, to continue further with the findings of problems that have arisen from the practice of implementing this means of appeal from its latest changes. Justice reform is still in its infancy and therefore the practice of elaborating this tool has been insufficient.