In the history of criminal procedural law, there have been three models of criminal proceedings: adversarial, inquisitorial and mixed criminal proceedings. Adversarial or adversary system is chronologically the first legal system used in common law. The limitation of that system was the lack of the institution of the public prosecutor, which enabled the development of another system, known as inquisitorial type of criminal proceeding. Inquisitorial criminal proceeding is defined as unilateral conduct of the state authority in the case of criminal offenses whose perpetrators are prosecuted ex officio. Since the investigation is the main stage of this proceeding, it is also known as the investigative process. This proceeding appeared for the first time in the Roman Empire, but the application ceased after the fall of the Empire until the 13th century. Re-application was the result of reception of the Roman-canon law in Europe. The most important principles that permeate this proceeding are: the principle of officiality, the principle of the secrecy of the proceedings, the principle of literacy, the principle of inference and inquisitorial maxim. Inquisitorial criminal proceeding is characterized by the cumulative role of the judge, which is considered a major disadvantage of the system. Another important drawback of the inquisitorial criminal proceeding was the application of the torture as legal means of evidence. Torturing as evidence was mostly used in the proceedings conducted against witches and wizards. Despite numerous shortcomings, inquisitorial criminal proceedings were applied until the 19th century, when they were replaced by the mixed type processes, which are a synthesis of both of the previously mentioned proceedings: adversarial and inquisitorial.