Tagged: quality

The ICC Prosecutor Responds to Demands for Higher Evidentiary Standards

POST WRITTEN BY: Prof. Peter Widulski, Assistant Director of the First Year Legal Skills Program and the Coach of International Criminal Moot Court Team at Pace Law School.

On June 25, 2014, the Office of the ICC Prosecutor formally established a Scientific Advisory Board to assist the Office in its investigatory and prosecutorial work. The Board will consist of sixteen forensic experts whose task will be to inform the Office of scientific and technological developments helpful to the Prosecutor’s capability to collect and analyze scientific evidence.

The establishment of the Board represents an effort by the Prosecutor’s Office to upgrade the quality of evidence it presents to ICC Pre-Trial and Trial Chambers. In recent years, scholarly commentators have criticized international courts and tribunals, including criminal courts and tribunals, for failing to require and utilize fact findings based on scientific examination.

In its October 11, 2013 Strategic Plan, the Prosecutor’s Office noted that ICC judges were requiring “higher evidentiary standards” and “more and different kinds of evidence” from the Office. In response to this demand, the Plan stated that the Office’s Investigative Division will, among other things,

enhan[ce] its capabilities to collect other forms of evidence … in particular scientific evidence [and will] validat[e] its investigative standards with a panel of international experts.

In a June 27, 2014 press release, the Prosecutor’s Office stated that

[t]he work of the Board will be crucial to the Office’s efforts, as reflected in its new Strategic Plan, to strengthen its investigative capabilities and enhance the quality of its deliverables when it comes to scientific evidence collection and analysis.

In the effort to carry out its mandate under the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor’s Office has to work with limited resources in very difficult environments. It is to be hoped that the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Board will assist the Office in the challenges it faces.

Related Readings:

Commentators criticizing fact applications by international courts, including criminal courts and tribunals:

Commemorating Gideon’s 50th Anniversary

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, in which it recognized that the right to counsel is a fundamental right that is binding on the states.  As the many posts and discussions honoring the day reveal, it’s probably appropriate to label the occasion a bittersweet one:  sweet, because the decision was so obviously right, but bitter because of the lost promise of what might have been.  We are better off with the right to counsel, without doubt; but resources, volume, and politics, among other factors, have created problems with the quality of counsel received by many.

http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202592023918&Gideon_at__A_Muted_Trumpet&slreturn=20130219085253