Determinants of Delay of Criminal Litigation Trials in the Federal First Instance Court Akaki Division and the Oromia State Higher Court East Shoa Division
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Date
2010-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Delay in COUl1 process is one of the social evils in the administration of j ustice. It is generally
agreed that there is problem of delay in our courts es pecially in cri minal cases. In light of this
reality, it is important to study the problem of court delay in order to find possible remedies. The
objective of this research is to examine the influence of some causes of delay on the speed of a
criminal case in the time just after an indictment is filed and prior to post-trial processes. The
data set includes 660 criminal cases fi led from Sep. 26, 2007 to Nov. 26, 2007.The follow up
period was one year and all cases adjourned beyond Nov. 26,2008 are taken to be censored. The
survival behaviors are estimated and tested for significance using the Kaplan-Meier estimators
along with the log-rank and the Wilcoxon tests. The tie among causes of delay in criminal trials
and the speed of di sposal of criminal cases is assessed lI sing the Stratified Cox proportional
hazards model. The factor criminal offense (p-value = 0.0 158, HR = l.243) is found to be a
significant contributor to the pace of litigation in criminal proceedings. Therefore, quick
adj ustment is crucial on the justice deli very system of the two courts through giving trainings at
all levels to upgrade the capacity of judges, prosecutors and court supp0l1ing staff.