The Impact of Virtual Criminal Trial Implementation Towards Judge’s Sentencing Decision in West Jakarta District Court

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.211112.032How to use a DOI?

Keywords

virtual criminal trial; West Jakarta District Court; COVID-19; lockdown

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has affected the world in many aspects, including how the penal justice system might run in the era of movement restriction. Many countries around the globe are now shifting their judicial process to virtual space using video conferencing platform as an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. However, some parties are concerned about the issue of fairness that might arise, since the defendants will be seated in a separate facility from the judges, prosecutors, and their solicitors. This research aims to investigate whether the implementation of virtual criminal trial in West Jakarta District Court has a significant effect on the judge’s sentencing decision. A quantitative approach using comparison study was used as the research method. The data were extracted from the verdict sheets retrieved from supreme court’s online repository. Judge’s sentencing decision was measured by prison term in months. We compare the judge’s sentence for the drug dealer trials before the implementation of virtual criminal trial (June – December 2019, N = 68, M = 69.53, SD = 8.563) and after the implementation of virtual criminal trial (June – December 2020, N = 66, M = 67.52, SD = 6.884). Statistical analysis using independent sample t-test showed that there are no significant differences in the judge’s sentencing decision before and after the implementation of virtual criminal trial (t (132) = 1.498, p = >.05). In addition, we also found that there is no significant difference between the duration of the trial before the implementation of virtual criminal trial (2019) and after the implementation of virtual criminal trial (2020) (t (132) = 0.444, p = > 0.05). These results indicate that the judge’s sentencing decision in West Jakarta District Court remain stable throughout the given period time and arguably not affected by the virtual trial circumstances.

Copyright

© 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fitra H. Wityanto
AU  - Amalia Lathifah
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/11/23
TI  - The Impact of Virtual Criminal Trial Implementation Towards Judge’s Sentencing Decision in West Jakarta District Court
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Law and Human Rights 2021 (ICLHR 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 253
EP  - 258
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.211112.032
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.211112.032
ID  - Wityanto2021
ER  -