Plea Bargain and its Effectiveness in Uganda's Judicial System

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 Introduction

The term plea bargaining is one which attracts different meanings worldwide and there is no standard universal definition. A broad and simple definition would be where an accused person is given an incentive to plead guilty by a promise, or at least a chance, that he will be 'rewarded' in a certain way.1 Black's Law Dictionary offers a definition of plea bargaining that refers to the accused person and the prosecutor as working 'out a mutually satisfactory disposition of the case subject to court approval. It usually involves the accused person pleading guilty to a lesser offence or to only one or some of the counts of a multicount indictment in return for a lighter sentence than that possible for the graver charge'.