Resningsförfarandet i brottmål - Rättssäkerhetens problematik

Sammanfattning: In Sweden courts exist mainly for the purpose of creating justice. As a principle, court rulings, which have not been appealed, shall remain definitive. Once a ruling no longer can be appealed it will gain legal force. As such, the legal force functions as a form of safety for both parties in trials as well as for the community as a whole since it brings an end to the trial and justice is brought. However, the justice conveyed in the court rulings does not always correspond with the material justice, that is, the objective truth. Therefore, a special legal remedy exists in the Swedish legal system which provides the means of revising a definitive ruling and trying the case anew. These provisions constitute the final possibility of changing an erroneous ruling and achieving material justice. In recent Swedish public debate the means of revising definitive rulings have been criticized, and thanks to a couple of criminal cases, closely followed by the media, the subject has become quite popular. In contrast to the arisen criticism it is of interest to examine the Swedish provisions for revision of court rulings and investigate if there are any issues with their form. The purpose of this essay is to examine the Swedish revision of criminal cases and discuss the application process therein. The essay explains the Swedish system for revision of court rulings and highlights the legal principles that permeate the process. For context, the Swedish revision procedure is compared with the revision system in Norway, which has undergone major alterations. As of now, Norway utilizes an independent commission responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice and deciding if a case shall be subject to a new trial. It acts outside of the archetypal judicial system. The two systems differ greatly in their respective process, but in the later part of this essay it is shown that Sweden may learn from the Norwegian system. The reason is that the problems regarding the Swedish system found during the writing of the essay could be addressed in a similar fashion as it was implemented in Norway.