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Some theoretical and Practical Issues of Sentencing
11-25Views:276Sentencing is connected to the trial stage of the criminal procedure; more precisely, it takes place at its end. Judges fulfil only a part, and not even the hardest one, of their duty by establishing criminal liability as a result of the evidentiary procedure. Sentencing is a rather complex and complicated process. Judges face a lot of expectations: they often have to reconcile contradictory expectations with each other in order to impose a satisfactory sentence for the parties. The process of sentencing has received intense criticism. Sometimes judges are accused of imposing unduly lenient sentences or criticized for too severe punishments.
Another problem is presented by the fact that different sentences are passed for crimes of the same sort at different courts in the country. Sentencing thus raises many theoretical questions that I seek to answer in the study.
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The Constitutional Obstacles before the Promulgation of the Rome Statute
45-59Views:370July 17, 1998, can be considered as one of the most important milestones of the international judicial structure: it is the day when the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted by 120 states out of 148. Article 86 of Statute explicitly states that „States Parties shall […] cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” As in the case of every international treaty, the principle of pacta sunt servanda enshrined in Article 26 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties states applies, which explicitly states that “every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.” As has been pointed out by the Permanent Court of International Justice, contracting states must make all the necessary internal measures which are required to fulfil its international obligations rising from a binding treaty. One could ask, why is this quite obvious argument important in the case of Hungary? Well, Hungary has ratified the Statute but still has not implemented it in its internal legislation. This can be considered as a serious constitutional omission, since if the Court would require the cooperation of Hungary – e.g. in the case of an arrest warrant – and it would not be able to fulfil it because of the lack of the internal legal norms, it would be considered as international legal responsibility of Hungary. In this article, I try to explore the reasons behind this omission and outline the possible solutions.
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The Criminal Provisions of the DDoS Attacks in the United States, Eu- rope and Hungary
66-83Views:356The Internet offers an opportunity to launch y wide range of cyberattacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which exploits the vulnerabilities of the system network without access. DDoS attacks continue to grow in intensity and complexity. Due to the Crime-as-a-Service business model and online criminal markets DDoS attacks have become accessible to anyone willing to pay for such services. It can be launched easily, although it may cause serious social and economic damage. The aim of this paper to present the criminal provisions of the DDoS attack in the United States, Europe and Hungary.
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Critical Remarks on the Acquittal of Vojislav Šešelj with regard to Instigation, Aiding and Abetting
97-109Views:148Vojislav Šešelj was acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on 31 March 2016. The Trial Chamber of the ICTY assessed evidence on the recruitment of volunteers (who later became perpetrators of international crimes), the defendant’s extremist, nationalistic and public hate speeches, and drew the conclusion that he is not responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The present paper discusses gaps and mistakes appearing in the judgement from the point of view of two criminal liability concepts: instigation and aiding and abetting. After briefly summarizing the standards applied by the ICTY, the author presents a reassessment of the facts referring also to the major arguments of Judge Flavia Lattanzi (dissenting).
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The role of Community Work in Decreasing Prison Population: the Finnish Experience
81-96Views:199A major part of the endeavours in recent punitive policy is to find alternatives for imprisonment. By a well-thought-out application of alternative sanctions and especially community work, criminal policy may greatly affect the proportion of the imposed sentences of imprisonment. One of the good examples can be seen in Finland, where the prison population of 200 convict per 100.000 citizens could be decreased to the quarter in a few decades. This study endeavours to present this process, hoping that such a short review may be usefully edifying also for Hungarian criminal policy.
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Judging Homicide Cases: Legal Rules and Practice of the Regional Court of Appeal of Debrecen
113-130Views:117The Autor examined the sentencing practice of the Regional Court of Appeal of Debrecen in homicide cases. The conclusion of his paper is, based on the examination of relevant case law, that courts regard the medium of the custody range as a basis for sentencing in homicide cares. This practice is independent of the relevant requirements provided by the General Part of the Criminal Code. The author also states, according to the examination mentioned above, that a life impissonment without the possibility of parote, is only exceptionally in the recent practice.
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Less is Sometimes More? The Guaranteeing Role of the Scope of the Second Instance Review in the first Hungarian Code of Criminal Procedure (Act XXXIII of 1896)
Views:30At the time of the codification of first Hungarian Code of Criminal Procedure, the legal literature regarded the limited scope of second-instance revision as a limitation of appeal in favour of the defendant, and placed it in this sense inside the procedural doctrinal system. This idea, which is quite alien to contemporary procedural thinking, which focuses on speeding up and facilitating proceedings, raises the question: what are the principles on which the limited scope of review is considered as a guarantee for the defendant? In order to answer this question, my aim in the present study is to explore the system of principles that shaped the turn-of-the-century jurisprudence concerning the legal power of the second instance to grant review.
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Personal and Organizational Framework for the Activities of the Defence Counsel in Hungary
79-88Views:119In the Hungarian system of criminal procedure, several participants of the proceeding may provide activities aiming at the defence of the defendant (e.g. the prosecutor or even the defendant himself). My dissertation, however, shall focus on the activities of the defender based on delegation or recorded Power of Attorneys given, in consideration of the fact that almost without exception this personal group act as advocates in criminal procedures, furthermore, solely lawyers have the expertise necessary for the defence, and the “equality of arms” principle may only succeed completely through them.
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Challenges and Future Developments of Criminalistics
42-61Views:169This study analysis the futuring theoretical and practical development possibilities of criminalistics – as universal factscience. It tries to sign the further tendencies of forensic sciences in the XXI. century as well. The author composes scientific fields where can be and need to real, intentional strengthening of recent criminalistical methods and writes about his future guessing, suggestions and challanges of criminalistics.
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Possessing Special Expertise: Review of the Book “Current Challenges of Expert Evidence”
221-224Views:81The book titled "Current Challenges of Expert Evidence” by Mónika Nogel published in 2020 is reviewed in the present article. The review focuses mainly on the author’s thesis which restores confidence in forensic expert reports by constructing the definition of credibility and its criteria.
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Past, Present and Future of the Criminal Investigation – A new monograph on the tendencies of Criminalistics
151-155Views:188Book review on the book of Fenyvesi Csaba, the title is "A kriminalisztika tendenciái. A bűnügyi nyomozás múltja, jelene, jövője" (Dialóg Campus, Budapest–Pécs, 2014.)