Don’t plead guilty to offence you never committed – CJ

Chief Justice Bart Katureebe has asked prisoners to avoid pleading guilty to offences they never committed for the sake of coming out of prison.

Speaking at the opening of plea bargain hands-on training at Mbarara Main Prison on Monday, Justice Katureebe said since the introduction of this arrangement, several people are lured to plead guilty to the offences they did not commit simply because they want to leave prison very fast.

Plea bargain is a negotiated agreement between a defendant and a prosecutor in a criminal case. The defendant agrees to plead guilty to the offense in exchange for a lenient sentence.

Mr Katureebe said pleading guilty to an offence one never committed tarnishes his or her record and the public image and his or her future might be affected by such bad record.

“Plea bargain does not mean that you just accept an offence you did not commit. This is an important thing I want you to understand. We do not want you to plead guilty simply because you want to leave prison; that is not plea bargain. If you never committed an offence, wait for the full trial, you give your defence so that you are either acquitted or convicted,” Justice Katureebe said.

The Chief Justice said prisons are for convicts, not for suspects on remand and that Judiciary is working hard to ensure the remand ratio in prison is reduced.

“Many people in prisons are untried. We should have the prisons full of convicts, not remands but we have short falls in our judicial system; judges are not enough, money is not enough, (lack of) witnesses and so on and so forth, so we end up having a lopsided situation, Justice Katureebe said.

He further said instead of waiting long for government to recruit more judges, he will instruct chief magistrates to start handling cases meant to be heard in the High Courts in order to reduce backlog.

The director of correctional services, Mr Samuel Akena, who represented the commissioner general of prisons, also decried the high number of prisoners.

“My lords, as of February 2020, the population of prisoners in the country stood as follows: 32,019 convicts, 28,607 remands and 390 judgment debtors. But we have the issue of capacity of prisons,” Mr Akena said.

Plea bargain
What it is. A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case between the prosecutor and the accused person whereby the latter agrees to plead guilty to a particular charge in return for some concession from the prosecutor.

A voluntary plea of guilt under this mechanism may see the number or severity of the charges against an accused person or their punishment reduced.

Plea bargain was introduced as an alternative to manage case backlog that would lead to the decongestion of prisons. This system is quite popular in the developed world.