Waiver of the Right (Loss of the Right) to a Confrontation by Committing an Unlawful Act (Forfeiture by Wrongdoing)
The article deals with a number of theoretical issues of the waiver, in particular, the concept and types of waiver of the right to a confrontation. The author shows the correlation between the concepts «waiver of the right» and «loss of the right» and points out that when a person commits an unlawful act, he waives the right to a confrontation and hinders the normal course of court hearings through the unlawful influence on trial participants, evasion from proceedings or unauthorized leaving of a courtroom. If the defendant impedes the natural progress of court hearings, he is warned about the possibility of being removed from the courtroom if the unlawful conduct does not stop. If he continues to commit unlawful acts during the court session, then he in fact waives his right to participate in the court hearing and the right to a confrontation (loses these rights). The author points out that in practice there are cases when the accused person evades the investigation and stays on the wanted list for years or when a person leaves for another country to evade the investigation and, as a result, is deprived of an opportunity to interrogate the witnesses who testified against him because these witnesses are no longer available, for example, they have died, or are in the country where the crime was committed. The author also considers the situations when the accused leaves the court hearing without authorization as a waiver of the right to confrontation. In this case the accused does not insist on his right and waives these constitutional privileges because he was given a right to confrontation but chose not to use it and not to meet the witnesses who have testified against him.