Sentencing Guidelines and Their Applications in Ethiopian Federal Courts

Abstract

Disparities of sentencing in similar crimes cause a typical problem; Law scholars devoted their time to reconcile the debate “should the crime fit with the individual or should the individual behavior fit with the type of crime that she or he committed?” This has remained an issue in criminal sentencing. It is the most crucial stage in criminal justice system because crime is an inevitable phenomenon in human social life. In addition, sentencing is a means designed to give notice for the general public by described punishable crimes and to punish a criminal that he/she have to be convicted by a court of law. In ancient times, punishment was premised on the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” and punishments were degrading and inhumane by today’s standard. These days punishments are relatively humane and focus on rehabilitation. Many universal human right instruments provide for the rights of convicted persons and many countries are members of these instruments. Sentencing disparity is a problem everywhere, and countries have adopted sentencing guidelines to solve this problem. Ethiopia is one of them that adopted and revised the first and the second sentencing guidelines in 2010 and 2013 respectively. The study has applied qualitative and doctrinal legal research method that revealed the following points. The general objective of this study is to explore whether the Ethiopian Federal Supreme court sentencing guidelines could tackle the unwarranted sentencing disparities in federal courts or not. In addition, the main purposes of the sentencing guidelines have to ensure proportionality, consistency, predictability and fairness of sentencing throughout in the country on federal matters. However, the principles of alike cases were not getting uniformity of decision that have been realized in many scenarios; the sentencing guidelines from design to practices shown that it was unable to stop unwarranted disparities of sentencing due to different factors. The lack of clarity of sentencing guidelines, the lack of mutual understanding of the legal practitioners to the sentencing guidelines, lack of supervision and controlling mechanisms of the sentencing guidelines were considered as the root causes of sentencing disparities.