Plea Bargaining at the ICTY: Guilty Pleas and Reconciliation

Abstract

To date, 20 defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have pleaded guilty. Such guilty pleas have generally been accepted by the Trial Chambers as mitigating circumstances on the grounds, inter alia, that they can facilitate reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. Yet as these guilty pleas are frequently induced through plea bargains, in which important concessions are accorded to defendants, this necessarily raises fundamental questions about whether guilty pleas can and do in fact foster reconciliation. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to explore this posited link between guilty pleas and reconciliation which, in turn, is one dimension of the broader linkage that the Tribunal makes between its work and reconciliation. It will focus on two particular claims made by the Tribunal - that guilty pleas aid reconciliation by helping to establish the truth and that when defendants acknowledge responsibility for their crimes, this may help to provide victims with closure. It will seek to demonstrate that both of these assertions are flawed, and will conclude by addressing some of the broader issues and questions raised by the ICTY's use of plea bargains, in particular the critical relationship between plea bargains and outreach work.