Newsletter
NEW RULES FOR SUMMARY CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
Article 449 Paragraph 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that in the first-instance court, if the defendant has confessed to the offense during the investigation, or there is other con-clusive evidence of guilt, then the public prose-cutor may petition for the ordinary trial proce-dure to be dispensed with and sentence to be passed by summary judgment. But if necessary, the court may examine the defendant before passing sentence. Article 449 Paragraph 2 pro-vides that if the prosecutor has filed a prosecu-tion under the normal procedure, but the defen-dant admits to the offense, the court may, if it believes it appropriate, directly pass sentence by summary judgment. Paragraph 3 restricts the use of summary proceedings to cases punishable by a suspended sentence, by imprisonment or deten-tion commutable to a fine, or by a fine.
The summary justice system exists for reasons of economy, but also has the advantage of bringing minor cases to a swift conclusion. Since the court does not need to examine the defendant in summary cases, the matters required to be re-corded in a summary judgment are also simpli-fied in order to reduce the workload on judges. A summary judgment must state of the facts of the offense in order to clearly define the scope of the verdict, but the items of evidence on which the court bases its finding of fact need now only be named, rather than their specific content being stated.
When the Code was amended on 8 June 2004, the previous requirement for a summary judg-ment to "state the evidence" was changed to "name the evidence." The amended Article 454 requires a summary judgment to state the fol-lowing: (1) particulars of the defendant, prose-cutor, and defense counsel; (2) the facts of the offence and the names of the items of evidence; (3) the provisions offended against; (4) the de-tails of the sentence; and (5) a notice informing the defendant that an appeal may be made within 10 days after service of the judgment (unless no appeal is allowed).
A defendant who does not accept a summary verdict may file an appeal, to be heard by a panel of judges at the district court. But no appeal is allowed if the judgment and sentence imposed by the court are in accordance with a statement made by the defendant to the public prosecutor that he is willing to accept a certain level of sentence or a suspended sentence (Article 455-1).