Abstract:
This study focuses on confessions obtained through plea bargaining which, in general, guarantee more lenient sentencing in return. Otherwise, hardly any defendant would ever make a confession. This means that confession and penal abatement have clearly become a "commodity" ("an article of trade") in plea bargain practice, regardless of whether or not one wants to notice it or not. Thus, questions of procedural law related to the practice of plea bargaining cannot be considered in isolation from those of substantive law. Therefore, the fundamental question of whether or not and to what extent the practice of plea bargaining contradicts the basic tenets of existing German criminal procedure aimed at material establishment and adequate punitive sentencing depends, to a large extent, on what role confession plays in sentencing and in the hearing of evidence, both in "normal" criminal proceedings as well as in plea bargaining. These questions are, therefore, the subject of the work at hand.