The Proposed Plea Bargaining in Ethiopia: How it Fares with Fundamental Principles of Criminal law and Procedure

The FDRE Criminal Justice Policy embodies multiple reforms that are meant to address the various problems in the Ethiopian criminal justice system. The reforms include the introduction of plea bargaining which represents an unprecedented and ambitious development in the realm of the criminal justice system in Ethiopia. This article examines plea bargaining as envisaged in the FDRE Criminal Justice Policy and the Draft Criminal Procedure Code, from a principle based approach and argues that it hardly lives up to many of the fundamental principles of criminal law and procedure recognised under Ethiopian law. The most affected principles/rights include: the principle of presumption of innocence, the principle of equality, the principle of equality of arms, the principle of truth discovery, the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to silence, and the right to appeal.