Plea Bargaining from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights Plea Bargaining from the perspective of the European Court of Human Rights
Abstract
The most recent alternative way of resolving penal matters, the so-called Agreement on Guilt and Punishment, which an amendment of the Penal Code, Act. No. 193/2012, has introduced into the Czech Criminal Proceedings as of September 1, 2012, is a relatively revolutionary procedural institute.
The new institute changes the current fundamental principles of the Czech continental system of criminal procedure in favour of principles applied in a legal system of common law countries, same as was actually the case in other countries of continental Europe where similar procedural institutes are applied. Such trends, when guilt and punishment are subject to the agreement of contracting parties, have, over time, drawn the attention of the European Court of Human Rights, and it has been focusing on practices of the bargaining process between the accused and the public prosecutor in its decisions in recent years more often.