Before the National Assembly begins debate on a draft criminal law, rules should be made to increase the independence and efficiency of court prosecutors, legal experts said last week.
The current system—in which an investigating judge gathers evidence and interviews witnesses, and then hands his files over to the court prosecutor—is inefficient, participants at a Cambodian Defender’s Project-sponsored seminar said Tuesday.
The investigating judge has as long as six months to build a case against the accused, but the prosecutor only has three days to review those files before the trial. And because each province only has one prosecutor, his case loads build up, sometimes giving the prosecutor only a few hours to review the documents before trial.
The defense knows the case more thoroughly than the prosecutor, experts said.
To help fix the problem, the panel will recommend to the National Assembly that investigating judges be eliminated and the prosecutors be placed in a department separate from the judges within the Ministry of Justice.
“All prosecutors should be independent in their decision-making without any pressure,” Justice Minister Uk Vithun said.
The panel also wants prosecutors to have more pre-trial access to witnesses and evidence, and for prosecutors to have no pre-trial information-sharing with judges.
