Guilty Pleas in International Criminal Law: Constructing a Restorative Justice Approach for Bridging Justice and Truth

Abstract

This thesis explores the use of plea bargaining in the context of international crimes, and begins with a descriptive account of the plea bargaining that has taken place at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in East Timor. The thesis then turns to a normative justification of plea bargaining. In particular, because very limited resources are available for the prosecution of international crimes, most international offenders will not suffer criminal sanctions even in situations where the political will exists to bring them to justice. Because prosecuting only small numbers of (usually high-level) offenders does not advance the penological goals associated with international criminal prosecutions, the thesis argues that conventional plea bargaining - that is, the kind of plea bargaining practiced in national jurisdictions - is justified in the international context as a means of enhancing criminal accountability. The thesis goes on to construct an innovative guilty-plea system that incorporates restorative-justice principles, such as truth-telling, victim participation, and reparations. Such a restorative-justice guilty plea process serves not only to increase the number of offenders who can be prosecuted but also to advance reconciliatory goals more traditionally associated with non-prosecutorial mechanisms, such as truth commissions and reparations schemes.