Studying the Provisions and Effects of Plea Bargaining in the International Criminal Court

Authors

1 (An MA in Criminal Law & Criminology)

2 Mahin Sobhani (Assistant professor at Guilan University)

3 (Assistant professor at Guilan University)

Abstract

One of the institutions which is used against the convicts in the countries with the legal system of common law and sometimes in countries with written law is plea bargaining. It means that the negotiation of an agreement between a prosecutor and a defendant whereby the defendant agrees to plead guilty to change in charges or to drop some charges. This institution took place firstly in the United States and then spread to other countries and the legal systems. After the establishment of the international criminal court (ICC), these tribunals started to use this system, as the international criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia is the first tribunal which has exercised this system to resolve some cases and successively, other international criminal tribunals welcomed (accepted) it. Lastly, it has been implicitly implied by the international criminal court (ICC) in its statute. With the respect to the acceptance of this system in the international criminal tribunal specially for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, special panels for East Timor and the international criminal court, meanwhile studying the judiciary procedure and the available international documents, it will be surveyed the effects and provisions for using this system to explore and prove the committed crimes.
 

Keywords