The collected data led to conclusions that, on the one hand, in the case of Lithuania the process of legal desovietization and decolonization was more successful than in Russia. Lithuania was able gradually to implement more and more Western legal concepts in the laws and the criminal prosecution reality.
However, until the adoption of the new Criminal and Criminal Prosecution codes in the early 2000s, the criminal justice system of Lithuania retained many of its old Soviet traits. The country also faced multiple problems, resulting from the organized crime field.
The main conclusions:
- Lithuania, just like the other post-Soviet countries, in the 1990’s was facing multiple problems, causing risks to the successful criminal justice system’s transformation towards the rule of law: the growing crime numbers, organized crime, problems related to the criminal prosecution system’s institutions low budgets and lack of personnel.
- However, the situation in Lithuania seems to be better than, for instance, Russia. Our research did not provide strong evidence that the features, signaling that the principle of rule of law was totally abandoned, were present in Lithuania: for instance, the situations when no major organized crime trials were taking place. Also, most legal norms, violating fundamental human rights in the criminal procedure, were abolished.
- The large-scale involvement of the corrupt officials and legislators to the adoption of the new legislation, favorable to the organized crime, in Lithuania was not detected. As the social graph demonstrates – in Lithuania Criminal prosecution, political systems did not merge with criminal networks – despite some cases that became an exception to this rule. So, in Lithuania the organized crime did not supplant functions of the law and state.
- However, the passivity of the prosecutors and police investigators obviously existed – corruption was also present, at least to some extent. It was allowed to violate the rights of suspects in the criminal prosecution process – in order to be more efficient in dealing with the organized crime. Also, the accusatorial bias in the criminal prosecution system was only eliminated after the adoption of the new Criminal Procedure Code in the early 2000s.
- In post-Soviet Lithuania the law was not stable – due to the constant reforming of the separate parts of the Soviet criminal code that was still used in the first decade of the independence – the legal system lacked stability. The judicial power branch was not always independent enough – as the executive or legislative branches could speed up the process of the criminal investigation.
- We can conclude that, however, learning from the Western example during the reform of the criminal justice system in Lithuania was more successful than in some other post-Soviet states (but less successful as, for instance, in Estonia). Also, the most brutal, organized forms of crime, seriously threatened the future of the country and its major democratic reforms. In Lithuania it was suppressed and the most negative scenarios of the future developments were avoided.