By Emma Elekwa, Onitsha
A university don, Akeem Olajide Bello, has allayed fears over the possibility of increasing cases of criminality occasioned by plea bargain application in criminal justice administration.
He also said the plea bargain would neither lead to awarding incommensurate sentences to serious crime offenders nor be abused by the Attorney-General of the Federation or those of the states.
Bello spoke during a one-day training for media practitioners in Anambra State, tagged “Training of Judicial Correspondents on Plea Bargain and Sentencing Practices’, organised by the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Programme (RoLAC), funded by the European Union and implemented by the British Council.
He described plea bargain as a negotiated agreement between a prosecutor and a defendant, where the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser offence or to one of multiple charges in exchange for some concession by the prosecutor, usually, a more-lenient sentence, or a dismissal of the other charges.
Bello said: “Plea bargain is not illegal but is provided for in the constitution aimed at addressing some of the problems facing the administration of criminal justice in the country, such as problem of delay, high cost of prosecution, prison congestion, problem of inefficiency among others.
“Plea bargain doesn’t mean the offender is not going to be punished anymore; no, he is still going to be punished, but will be given a lesser punishment.
“With this, all the delay, high cost and inefficiencies associated with the prolonged trial and prosecution will be avoided; and prisons will equally be decongested.”
Bello, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos, regretted the absence of a functional federal forensic laboratory for criminal cases in the country, aside that of the Lagos State Government, which, he said, lacked the full complement of forensic tests analyses.
“I’m aware they usually travel abroad to do some of the forensic testings that would have been done in the country, which is very expensive,” he added.
The Anambra State Coordinator of RoLAC, Mrs. Josephine Onah, stressed the place of the media in sensitizsing the public of the existence of plea bargain and its operation.
She also urged the state to facilitate the legislative processes to ensure an enabling framework for plea bargain manual and sentencing practices were created.
Leave a Reply