By Hudson Kuteesa, KIGALI
Rwanda
Plea bargaining is set to be officially rolled out in Rwanda with a total of 373 suspects having expressed interest in it, and registered their cases to be handled through the procedure.
In law, plea bargaining is the
practice of negotiating an agreement between the prosecution and the defence,
whereby the defendant pleads guilty to particular charges in exchange for a
lenient sentence.
Wednesday, October 12 is the
day when Rwanda’s justice system will
start implementing the procedure, beginning with a five-year pilot
phase in five intermediate courts: Gasabo, Nyarugenge, Gicumbi, Muhanga, and
Musanze.
During the pilot phase, plea
bargaining will be only applied in cases involving assault and theft.
Since last week, officials
from the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) and lawyers, among
others, visited Nyarugenge Prison and sensitized various detainees about the
procedure.
Here, 373 detainees remanded
on charges of theft and assault registered their cases for plea bargaining, and
this according to the officials, is a factor that shows how interested they are
in the procedure.
Plea bargaining is one of the measures that the justice sector is counting on to not only reduce backlog in courts and overcrowding in prisons, but also deliver justice in a faster and more efficient way.
According to Juvenal
Marizamunda, the Commissioner-General of Rwanda Correctional Services (RCS),
the country’s correctional facilities are home to about 10,550 detainees who
are waiting for their day in court.
This is equivalent to twelve
per cent of the total prison population.
“Some detainees have stayed in
detention for weeks, others for months,” he said on Tuesday, October 11, during
an event organised by the Judiciary to mark the commencement of plea bargaining
in the country.
He welcomed plea bargaining as
a mechanism that will assist many of them to access justice in a quick way.
Faustin Ntezilyayo, the Chief
Justice of Rwanda said the goal of the procedure is not to allow people to
escape justice for the crime they have committed or limit the jurisdiction of
the prosecution or courts.
“The goal instead is to
encourage the accused persons to accept responsibility when appropriate and
bring faster justice to the accused, the victims but also the community,” he
said.
Moise Nkundabarashi, the
President of the Rwanda Bar Association noted that it is important to come up
with such solutions in the criminal justice system, in order to deal with the
problems that are facing the justice sector currently.
“At this point in time,
looking at the issues and challenges that we are facing in our correctional
services, we cannot afford to continue operating in the same way that we used
to,” he said.
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