Guilty pleas in international criminal law : constructing a restorative justice approach

"Combs skillfully introduces the subject of plea bargaining as a process that can resolve, or at least mitigate, the problems facing efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Time and time again, Guilty Pleas furthers the goals of restorative justice in an innovative and insightful fashion."—John F. Murphy, Villanova University School of Law "Plea bargaining (and amnesty) constitutes the critical dilemma of international criminal law. Nancy Combs provides the most thorough treatment we have of it. This is a thoughtful book that exposes the paradoxes in the way rule of law policies work out. It is a landmark contribution to international criminal law and to restorative justice scholarship."—John Braithwaite, Australian National University International crimes, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, are complex and difficult to prove, so their prosecutions are costly and time-consuming. As a consequence, international tribunals and domestic bodies have recently made greater use of guilty pleas, many of which have been secured through plea bargaining. This book examines those guilty pleas and the methods used to obtain them, presenting analyses of practices in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Cambodia, Argentina, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Although current plea bargaining practices may be theoretically unsupportable and can give rise to severe victim dissatisfaction, the author argues that the practice is justified as a means of increasing the proportion of international offenders who can be prosecuted. She then incorporates principles drawn from the domestic practice of restorative justice to construct a model guilty plea system to be used for international crimes. International criminal justice then and now : the long road from impunity to [some] accountability - Financial realities : targeting only the leaders Do the numbers count? : the ends served by International criminal prosecutions in societies emerging from mass atrocities The plea bargaining of international crimes : the practice of the ICTY, ICTR, special panels for East Timor, and Gacaca Courts Plea bargaining at the ICTR and at the special panels in East Timor Using conventional plea bargaining to increase the number of criminal prosecutions for international crimes Plea bargaining as restorative justice : using guilty pleas to advance both criminal accountability and reconciliation Applying restorative principles in the aftermath of different atrocities : a contextual approach The minimal role of restorative justice in current international criminal prosecutions.