Agreements are not made with the head of an organized criminal group, lawyer Goran Rodić said in the program Načisto, which is currently being broadcast on TV Vijesti.
Commenting on the acceptance of the plea agreement in the case of Svetozar Marović, the guests in the studio said that they could not cite an example where such an agreement was made somewhere with someone who, by his own admission, is the head of a criminal group.
The President of the High Court, Boris Savić, stated that Svetozar Marović did not speak at the hearings about the alleged pressures that caused him to plead guilty. "I didn't have a chance to talk to the defendant. Those are the stories on the street," said Savić when asked if he advised Marović.
Rodić said that in the case of Marović, "rather it could be implied that it was a false confession."
"In the case of Marović, the state prosecutor has clearly shown that the law in Montenegro applies to everyone equally," claims senior state prosecutor Miloš Šoškić. Šošić states that the case of Marović is such that the individualization of punishment is very complex.
"Financial investigations await us in the case of Marović," Šoškić announced. Savić said that regardless of public resistance, the agreement should be used in cases of high corruption. "We have come to a situation where the prosecutor instead of the court applies the limits of the mitigation of the sentence and agrees on a suspended sentence," points out Rodić.
"The essence of Budva is that we showed that the law is equal for everyone and that crime does not pay," says Šoškić.
In 2016, the High Court concluded 100 plea agreements, Šoškić announced.
"We have cases in which defendants for minor crimes do not want to enter into plea agreements," Šoškić said.
He added that "if the prosecutor is not satisfied with the sentence, then the court decides on appeals." "The plea agreement does not violate the presumption of innocence," Šoškić explained.
President of the High Court in Podgorica, Boris Savić, Boris Savić said that it is "very problematic" that the institute of consensual guilty pleas has "taken root in our country".
"The judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys must completely change their thinking system," Savić said. "
Lawyer Goran Rodić said that there is certainly no legal solution like our Criminal Procedure Code anywhere.
Until 2015, and to this day, the only work that referred to the application of the institute was the work of Svetlana Vujanović," said Rodić.
He said that the goal of the Institute did not come to fruition and did not produce results in Montenegro.
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