"How Judges Arrest and Acquit: Soviet Legacies in Post-Communist Criminal Justice" by Alexei Trochev, Institute for Legal Studies/Global Legal Studies Center visiting scholar. Noon-1:15 p.m., Lubar Commons. Sponsored by GLS, ILS and UW-Madison's Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia.
Abstract: If someone fell asleep in the late 1980s in a courtroom in
Warsaw, Moscow or Tashkent, and suddenly awoke in 2010, she or he would
notice many differences. Yet, judges consistently show the Soviet-era
"accusatory bias" and side with the state prosecutors in both pre-trial
and trial stages of criminal proceedings. Despite highly varied
political systems, serious expansion of judicial discretion, a more
vibrant bar, and the introduction of adversarial court proceedings,
post-communist judges continue to strengthen two late socialist legacies
of criminal justice systems: near universal approval of detention of
the accused, and avoidance of acquittals. Post-communist judges from
Warsaw to Astana have the newly acquired exclusive power to detain the
accused, yet they consistently approve nine out of 10 detention requests
and nearly all (96 percent) requests for extension of detention proposed by
state prosecutors. They acquit defendants in criminal trials extremely
rarely (with no higher than 3 percent rates of acquittal), much like
socialist-era judges did in the 1980s when they acquitted less than 2 percent
of the defendants. In other words, if the socialist-era judicial chiefs
were to wake up in 2010, they would award post-communist judges with
bonuses and holiday trips for an excellent performance on the
basis of these two indicators. The reason for this attractiveness of
detentions and avoidance of acquittals lies in the mutually reinforcing
relationships between Soviet legacies and post-communist pro-accusation
incentives facing law-enforcement officials and judges.
Submitted by Law School News on September 4, 2013
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