Criminal Law Commons^™

Plea Bargaining At The Hague, Julian A. Cook

Scholarly Works

Plea bargaining has come to The Hague. For most of its existence, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) shunned plea bargains. However, under pressure from United Nations member states and the impending deadline for the resolution of its caseload, the ICTY has increasingly relied on plea bargains in recent months. This Article exposes the deficiencies in guilty plea procedures at The Hague, particularly those designed to assess whether a plea is fully informed and voluntary. In a series of case studies, the Article argues that judicial questioning techniques have exploited the vulnerable state of defendants appearing before …