ANALYSIS OF THE FACTUAL SUPPORT OF THE GUILTY PLEA AND SENTENCE BARGAINING IN THE MACEDONIAN CASES AGAINST ILLICIT MANUFACTURE AND TRADE IN FIREARMS

Abstract

With the enactment of the Law on Criminal Procedure in 2010, the Macedonian legislator has
introduced many modern adversarial trial instruments that were supposed to improve the efficiency
of the Macedonian criminal trials. After ten years from the enactment of this new law that has
provided a new concept of the criminal trials, we deem that it is necessary to reevaluate the effects
of these reformshi and their practical implementation. In this occasion, the author evaluates the
Macedonian court’s practice of implementation of the defendant’s guilty plea during the main
hearing of the criminal trials through the verdicts delivered for the crimes of Illicit Manufacture
and Trade of Firearms as regulated in article 396 of the Criminal Code. The author specifically
focuses upon the factual support of the guilty plea and analyses the amount of evidence that is
needed in order for the court to accept the guilty plea for such cases. Author concludes that in the
analyzed cases, the court does not provide sufficient factual support to the defendants’ guilty plea
and this guilty plea is considered as “regina probationem”.