Procedural actions are the actions of participants in criminal proceedings, which have an effect on criminal proceedings and for which criminal procedural law prescribes conditions and their effects. The aim of this work was to determine whether there are general rules about the effects of mistake (as a misconception or a discrepancy between a mental representation and a declared will) on the validity of the procedural actions of the defendant, the court and the prosecutor, which represent declarations of will.
By analysing the concept of a procedural act, it was found that it is not possible to analogously apply the rules on mistake from criminal material law or civil material law. It follows from the concept of procedural action that it is not comparable to the concept of a criminal act or to the concept of a legal transaction, even though procedural acts are declarations of will. It follows from the legal nature of procedural actions and criminal proceedings that a mistake has no effect on the validity of procedural actions due to the public law nature of relations in criminal proceedings and the principle of legal certainty. There are also exceptions to the stated rule, which are related in particular to the procedural actions of the defendant and are justified by the principle of justice, but the assessment of the applicability of the exceptions is not dependant on whether the defendant was actually mistaken and whether the mistake affected his actions, but rather the assessment depends on objective criteria. In addition to the above exceptions, there are other situations defined by law in which the consequences of procedural actions that were affected by a mistake can be revoked - for example, the court can change some of its decisions on its own, while the prosecutor and the alleged perpetrator can in principle withdraw their indirect procedural actions until a decision has been made on them.
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