Sentencing Of Inchoate Offences; Focusing On The Practice Of High Courts Within Bonga Division - South West Ethiopia

Abstract

As provided under the FDRE criminal code, inchoate crimes are criminalized and punishable by similar penalties to completed crimes. But the courts may reduce punishment if there is a justified circumstance. It required critical evaluation of facts and circumstances to differentiate the type of inchoate crime that needs equal punishment with the completed crime and needs penalty reduction. Also, the courts are required to properly implement the purposes and principles of punishment while imposing sentences on the defendants who have been found guilty of inchoate crimes. As a result, the purpose of this study is to assess the application of sentencing laws to defendants who are guilty of inchoate crimes. The study has the following objectives; identifying the rules and laws of sentencing and assessing the practical application to inchoate crimes; assessing the application of the principles and purposes of punishment on inchoate crimes, and identifying legal and practical challenges to the proper application of the sentencing laws on inchoate crimes within high courts of SNNPRS Bonga division. The researcher has used qualitative, doctrinal, and non-doctrinal research methods to address such research objectives. Accordingly, the researcher used interviews to gather data from the judges, public prosecutors, private lawyers, and defence counsel, and they were selected based on purposive sampling. And also, the court's decisions that involved inchoate crimes were used as the source of the data and identified based on purposive and random sampling methods. The primary result of the research shows the existence of a limitation on the practical application of laws, purposes, and principles of sentencing for inchoate crimes. The researcher identified the practical and legal challenges to the proper application of sentencing laws and rules. Among others, it includes the gap in the Revised Sentencing Manual, incompetence, lack of supervision and evaluation mechanisms, unbalances of litigating parties, lack of independence of judges, lack of accessibility laws, lack of training, and others. The writer strongly recommended urgent solutions required to solve the problems in the sentencing of inchoate crimes. It includes amendment of the sentencing guidelines, increasing numbers of judges and other legal professionals, adopting supervision and evaluation mechanisms, increasing competence, and others.