Admitting guilt in court case in accordance with new legislative changes

AuthorSimona Tache
PositionAssistant, Faculty of Law, Romanian American University, Bucharest; Lawyer, Bucharest Bar
Pages61-74
Simona Tache
61
LESIJ NO. XVIII, VOL. 1/2011
ADMITTING GUILT IN COURT CASE
IN ACCORDANCE WITH NEW LEGISLATIVE CHANGES
Simona TACHE
Abstract
Entry into force of the law no.202/2010 regarding some measures to speed up the trial
processes already raises some problems of interpretation especially concerning cases that are
pending. Such a situation was inevitable since the transitional provisions could not cover all
situations arising in practice, and the law mentioned above create some completely new
institutions in our criminal law. But I believe that for the new institution of admitting guilt in court
case, would be required to adopt transitional rules necessary to eliminate the controverses that
arise and will arise in practice. As any new institution, admitting guilt in court case will require a
certain period of time untill crystallize an unitary practice field, even more because the text
contains some vague expressions. Unfortunately, the courts have no benefit yet of a fast and
efficient mechanism for unifying the jurisprudence, and this fact will probably affect also the
solutions that will be taken by the courts in this matter.
Keywords : guilt, offence, court,unfair, controverses.
Introduction
Under the statement of reasons in the Law no. 202/2010, regarding some measures for
speeding up the cases settlement it has been illustrated that: ”the introduction in the Code of
Criminal Procedure of a new institution, such as the institution of trial in case of pleading guilty,
satisfies the need of efficacy of the judgment, contributing to the annulment of some time
consuming procedures and often useless for establishing the legal truth, subsuming to the
qualitative requirements of the act of justice”.
However, the entry into force of the Law no. 202/2010, stirred up numerous discussions
amid the practitioners and it has already generated a series of interpretation problems in the
judicial practice, especially regarding the application of this law to the pending cases, under
process of settlement, as long as the above-mentioned law has introduced some completely new
institutions in our criminal law, and the provisional measures could not cover all the possible
situations occurred into practice.
Under the marginal title “The judgement in case of pleading guilty”, the new art. 3201 of
the Criminal procedure code provides that “until the initiation of the court investigation, the
accused can declare either personally of by means of an authentic document that he / she
acknowledges to have been committed the incriminated actions recorded in the court notification
instrument and asks for the judgement to be settled based on the evidence submitted to the file in
the stage of criminal investigation” (art. 3201 paragraph 1 Code of criminal proc.). In the case of
applying this procedure “the court shall decide on the conviction of the accused, who benefits of
the remission by one third of the limits of the sentence provided by the law, in the case of sentence

Assistant, Faculty of Law, Romanian American University, Bucharest; Lawyer, Bucharest Bar (e-mail:
tachesimona@yahoo.com).

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