The German "Verstandigung" and Consensual Elements in German Criminal Trials

Negotiated agreements in criminal proceedings have often been regarded as the embodiment of a negative wider trend towards the informalization of the criminal procedure, and have-especially in Germany-long been the subject of vivid controversies. A criminal proceeding in the traditional sense aims to establish the truth ex officio, which is achieved by means of a comprehensive inquiry into the facts conducted by the court during the trial, followed by a sentence that appropriately reflects the individual guilt of the defendant, which can then, in turn, achieve the procedural objective of "justice." A streamlining of the extensive inquiry into the facts that the court would normally have to conduct via the consensual process of negotiation does not, a priori, fit the mold of a criminal procedure in the aforementioned sense. At the same time, the consensual termination of criminal proceedings-which also includes other forms of termination of the proceeding besides the concept of Verstandigung, which occur by means of a preferment of public charges-is, in fact, more prevalent in practice these days than judgments rendered in adversarial trials are. Our Article focuses on the reasons why this stark contrast between legal doctrine and reality came to pass and which aspects of the implementation of the concept of consensus into the German law of criminal procedure still seem problematic.