| Abstract: | This article examines the desirability of plea bargaining in Ethiopia focusing on
its policy justifications as encapsulated under the 2011 FRDE Criminal Justice
Policy. Emphasizing upon the specific contexts of Ethiopia, the article analyzes
policy documents, laws and comparative literature. The policy relies on the
traditional rationales of plea bargaining. However, most of the elements in the
rationales are under continuous criticism, and thus not compelling. The
exception could be the efficiency rationale which presumably has a special
force in attracting developing economies like Ethiopia. Yet in actuality, this is
not as compelling as imagined at least on two fronts. First, the rationale is
divorced from being principled in that lack of resources or the desire to spare
resources cannot vindicate an encroachment of fundamental rights and
freedoms. Second, the contextual investigation of the trial and case delay in
Ethiopia lends no conclusive support for it. If trials are exceptions and simple,
they will not be resource intensive, and thus are manageable with limited
resources. To a limited extent, plea bargaining is acknowledged for efficiency,
but this comes at the expense of the overarching values of criminal justice
namely fairness and accuracy and probably with other unintended perverse
consequences: violation of defendants’ rights, corruption and abuses, wrongful
convictions, among others. |
