On 22, 23, 24 September 2009, the Kosovo Judicial Institute in close cooperation with the U.S Department of Justice OPDAT, conducted the three-day seminar on Guilty Plea Agreement. The subjects covered by the U.S experts in the course of the three-day training focused on the general overview of the body of the law “Guilty Plea Agreement”, best practices of plea bargaining from their country and the impact that the respective agreement can have in reducing the backlog. A special attention was paid to the concrete content of the plea agreement, statements of parties, authorization forms to start the formal negotiations, the plea
questionnaire as well as the main duties and powers of the public prosecutor, judge and defence counsel during the guilty plea negotiations and drawing of the final plea agreement. A number of these forms were provided from the experts own practice.The working group breakouts was one of the main methods through which the seminar in question was conducted, during which the participants were assigned to different roles to bargain the guilty plea agreement according to the procedure foreseen under the law.The beneficiaries of the respective training were: judges, prosecutors and lawyers from all regions of Kosovo.
22-09-2009