Gärningsbeskrivningar vid åtal för medgärningsmannaskap - En analys utifrån rätten till en rättvis rättegång enligt Europakonventionen

Sammanfattning: This thesis concerns the procedural aspect of the legal construction of joint perpetratorship. Joint perpetratorship is a part of the legal doctrine of complicity and applies when two or more persons together commit a criminal offence. According to this legal construction they can both be charged and sentenced as perpetrators if they were in agreement about committing the offence. This thesis sets out to analyze the statements of the criminal acts in the indictments, laying the foundations for prosecutions regarding joint perpetratorship and evaluate whether these are in accordance with the right to a fair trial according to the European Convention on Human Rights art. 6. This specific legal construction, joint perpetratorship, has developed through case law and has come to have a relatively vague field of application. In my opinion there are no really clear rules regarding who can be judged a perpetrator according to this construction, and who cannot. After a review of the Swedish procedural legislation I have also come to the conclusion that the requirements for the statement of the criminal act in the indictment as stated in the national Swedish legislation are not particularly stringent. One aspect of the right to a fair trial according to the Convention is that the accused should be informed, promptly and in detail, of the accusation against him or her. The accused must also be given the adequate time and facilities to prepare his or her defence. This means that the indictment must provide the accused with enough information about the criminal act as charged, to ensure that he or she can prepare his or her defence. I have reviewed the statements of the criminal acts as charged, in a number of Swedish cases regarding joint perpetratorship and have discovered that many of these are relatively imprecise and in many cases, do not distinguish between the accused’s different actions. This results in the accusations being vague and therefore does not give the accused the proper information for them to prepare their defences. I have therefore come to the conclusion that the indictments do not comply with the Convention. To better fulfil the requirements of the Convention, the statements of the criminal acts in the indictments concerning joint perpetratorship should be drafted in a more detailed manner, which better distinguishes between the accused’s different actions. To attain this, clear guidelines for prosecutors should be adopted, and the boundaries and requirements of both joint perpetratorship and the indictments, should be clarified. In my opinion such clarification is best achieved through further legislation regarding both areas of law.