Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.3935/zpfz.73.1.03
Informal Plea Bargaining After the Beginning of the Main Hearing in Croatian Criminal Procedure: Experiences of Practitioners and Theoretical Analysis
Igor Martinović
; Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
Ivana Radić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4946-6437
; Faculty of Law, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Abstract
In Croatian criminal procedure law, there is a number of consensual forms of proceedings, including the provisions of Article 417.a paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Criminal Procedure Act, which limit the sentencing powers of the court if the defendant agrees to the sanction proposed by the state attorney. In order to determine how these provisions are understood and applied by legal practitioners, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 judges, 20 state attorneys and 20 criminal defence attorneys from the four largest Croatian cities. The interviews showed that the aforementioned provisions are extensively understood and that they serve as a pretext for various forms of informal negotiations between all of the three categories of participating legal professionals. In order to interpret the results more accurately, the initial part of the paper provided some theoretical considerations about informal plea bargaining from the aspect of the fundamental principles of Croatian criminal procedure. In that chapter, the viewpoints of the authors are elaborated as regards the forms of informal plea bargaining, and the conditions under which it could be deemed legally permissible. In the conclusion, the results of the research are summarized and certain conceptual shortcomings of the Croatian regulation and common legal practice are pointed out.
Keywords
plea bargaining; informal plea bargaining; criminal procedure; confession by the defendant
Hrčak ID:
300871
URI
Publication date:
2.4.2023.
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