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Plea Contracts in West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

William L. F. Felstiner
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Abstract

Many routine criminal cases in central Europe are concluded by an abbreviated process known as the penal order. The penal order is a written proposal by the state to a defendant stipulating the crime committed and the penalty to be levied if the defendant does not object. This paper describes the West German version of the penal order and argues that it avoids some of the negative practices allegedly inherent in American plea bargaining.

Type
Comparative Perspectives
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Winter 1979 , pp. 309 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © 1979 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This research was conducted under grants 75-NI-99-0069 and 78-NI-AX-0049 from the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, U.S. Department of Justice. I very much appreciate the cooperation and counsel of Gunther Arzt, Erhard Blankenburg, Johannes Feest, Joachim Herrmann, Hans Kerner, and Karl Schumann in Germany, and Richard Abel, George Fletcher, John Langbein, and Jan Stepan in the U.S. The conclusions in the paper are mine alone.

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