An agreement on guilt and punishment: comparison of Czech and Swiss legislation

Originally Anglo-Saxon criminal process concept in the form of plea bargaining also constituting the topic of this thesis has become a phenomena within a number of civil law countries in the last decades. This alternative way of solving criminal cases consists simply of the possibility for an agreement between the prosecutor and accused through plea bargaining if the accused, under certain conditions, admits committing the offense and agrees with the proposed punishment. When looking at foreign but also domestic legal literature we may, without any exaggeration, consider plea bargainig as a controversial institute. On one side are the proponents with their strongest argument being the acceleration and simplification of the criminal proceedings. However, on the other side, their opponents refer mainly to the flagrant inconsistency of this institute with the fundamental principles of continental criminal proceedings. In the first part this thesis the author examines the agreements in criminal proceedings in general, focusing on their origin, historical development and various basic forms in which the agreements in criminal proceedings are presented in the world. Special section is devoted to plea bargaining regulation in the Czech Republic where this institute was introduced by an Amendment to the..