The Right to a Fair Trial in International Criminal Law
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Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title The Right to a Fair Trial in International Criminal Law Author(s) McDermott, Yvonne Publication Date 2013-08 Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/3947 Downloaded 2021-09-29T17:05:38Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW By Yvonne McDermott A thesis awarded the degree of Ph.D. in Law by the National University of Ireland, Galway July 2013 Irish Centre for Human Rights School of Law College of Business, Public Policy and Law National University of Ireland Galway Supervised by Professor William A. Schabas OC MRIA i CONTENTS Declaration of Originality .................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. v Abstract .............................................................................................................. vi Abbreviations Used .......................................................................................... viii Table of Cases ................................................................................................... xii Table of Instruments ..................................................................................... xxxiii Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................... 1 1.1. Background and Context .......................................................................... 1 1.2. Research Question .................................................................................. 13 1.3. Methodology ........................................................................................... 13 1.4. Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 20 1.5. Outline of the Study ................................................................................ 30 Chapter 2: The Need for International Criminal Tribunals to Set the Highest Standards of Fairness ......................................................................................... 33 2.1. Goals of International Criminal Procedure ............................................. 34 2.2. International Criminal Procedure and Standard Setting: The Case in Favour ............................................................................................................ 40 2.3. International Criminal Procedure and Standard Setting: The Case Against ....................................................................................................................... 71 Chapter 3: Positive Precedents in International Criminal Procedure ................ 77 3.1. Practical Application of Fair Trial Rights at an International Level ...... 77 3.2. Provisional Release ................................................................................. 80 3.3. (Some) Nuanced Approaches to Self-Representation ............................ 83 3.4. Dealing with Disruptive Accused ........................................................... 87 3.5. Protection of Witnesses .......................................................................... 89 3.6. Independence and Impartiality................................................................ 92 Chapter 4: The Prosecutor’s Right to a Fair Trial And other Extensions of Fair Trial Rights to Actors outside of the Accused .................................................. 97 4.1. Theoretical Considerations: The Place of Other Procedural Actors in Achieving the Highest Standards of Fairness ................................................ 97 4.2. The Prosecutor’s Right to a Fair Trial .................................................. 101 4.3. The Rights of Victims, Witnesses and the International Community .. 109 ii Chapter 5: The Length of Trials and the Struggle to find an Ideal Place for Expedience ...................................................................................................... 114 5.1. The Right to Trial without Undue Delay in Practice ............................ 114 5.2. The Treatment of Motions on the Right to Trial without Undue Delay 134 5.3. The Reverse Application of the Right to Trial without Undue Delay .. 138 Chapter 6: The Use of Written Statements in Lieu of Oral Testimony at Trial ......................................................................................................................... 143 6.1. Background ........................................................................................... 146 6.2. Admissibility of Written Witness Statements ....................................... 149 6.3. Weight given to Written Witness Statements ....................................... 158 Chapter 7: Conclusion ..................................................................................... 166 7.1. Findings ................................................................................................ 168 7.2. Limitations of the Study ....................................................................... 179 7.3. Recommendations for Future Research ................................................ 180 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 183 iii DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY I, Yvonne McDermott, do hereby declare that this work that is submitted for examination is my own and that due credit has been given to all sources of information contained herein. With this declaration, I certify that I have not obtained a degree at National University of Ireland Galway or elsewhere on the basis of this work. I acknowledge that I have read and understood the Code of Practice dealing with Plagiarism and the University Code of Conduct of the National University of Ireland Galway and that I am bound by them. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to offer particular thanks to my supervisor, Prof. William A. Schabas for his support, encouragement and advice. This work would not have been possible without the benefit of his erudite and careful supervision. I also wish to convey my deepest gratitude to the Irish Centre for Human Rights for the financial support that I received in the form of a Doctoral Fellowship. I am greatly indebted to the following individuals who read and offered feedback on chapters of the work: Dr. Aoife Daly, Dr. Michelle Farrell, Dr. David Keane, Dr. Éadaoin O’Brien and Dr. Evelyne Schmid. Special thanks to Dr. Osian Rees who cheerfully proof-read the entire thesis and offered untrammelled moral support. I would also like to thank all of my friends from the Irish Centre for Human Rights for their camaraderie, especially Niamh Hayes, Joe Powderly, Tara Smith and Helen McDermott. A special word of thanks is owed to my brothers, Ronan and Conor, my sister-in- law Jane, and my parents, Desmond and Gabrielle. My parents have never wavered in their faith in me, love and encouragement, and it is my great pleasure to dedicate this thesis to them. v ABSTRACT Starting with the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals after the Second World War, international criminal law experienced a renaissance in the late 20th century, culminating in the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court in 1998. The corpus of international criminal law is now so developed that its procedure may be considered a distinct area of law and scholarship. This work seeks to examine the potential of international criminal tribunals to set the highest standards of procedural fairness for the conduct of criminal proceedings domestically. The procedure embraced by contemporary international criminal tribunals represents a sui generis system, underpinned by human rights standards and borrowing procedures from a variety of legal systems through their rules of procedure and evidence. This work points to a number of reasons why international criminal procedure ought to act as a beacon of fairness for domestic legal systems. First, international criminal tribunals have an accepted goal of spreading the rule of law in post-conflict states, which should include a role in demonstrating the highest fair trial standards. Second, there are a number of practices which involve international criminal tribunals’ assessment of whether domestic jurisdictions adequately guarantee due process norms, including the principle of complementarity before the International Criminal Court and transfers to domestic states under Rules 11bis before the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Third, the need to ensure the continued legitimacy of international trials is hinged on the fairness of their proceedings. Relatedly, there are clear dangers inherent in complying with anything less than the highest standards of fairness. International criminal procedure has embodied a number of positive precedents and has largely served in granting the accused a fair trial in an extraordinarily challenging context. Positive procedural developments include the very fact that trials are being conducted in a manner cognisant of the importance of the right to a fair trial; the implementation of witness protection measures in a manner consistent with the rights of the accused; some nuanced approaches to self-representation; the way in which disruptive accused have often been dealt with without violating their rights, and the move from having