Some Considerations Regarding the Procedure for the Plea Agreement

Abstract

The concept of negotiated justice is specific to the adversarial justice system, which is based on judicial truth, and involves the abandonment of the principles of legality and the discovery of truth (which require the elimination of any other criteria for determining guilt and applying punishment beyond those established by law) specific to the European continental system. The Romanian procedural system assigns the judiciary the mission of discovering the real, objective truth. However, the Romanian legislator, in the current regulation, has moved swiftly towards the adversarial procedural system, which is likely to significantly reduce the importance of the principle of discovering the truth in criminal proceedings, under the rationale of ensuring a shorter time for resolving cases. The deviation from the common rules applicable to criminal liability, which involves an agreement between the defendant and the prosecutor regarding the commission of the act, its classification, as well as the subsequent criminal sanction and its form of execution, occasionally attracts certain comments related to the participants in the criminal process, the limits of recognition and evidence, and the pronounced solutions.