Document Type : Research/Original/Regular Article

Authors

• Behnam Ghaffari ¹
• Seyyed Hamid SHahcheragh ²

¹ Judge of Justice, PhD in Private Law, Faculty of Law and Political Science, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

² Judge of Justice, Doctor of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law, Qom University, Qom, Iran

Abstract

One of the major problems at present in the branches of criminal Judgment's execution throughout the country, which have a significant volume of cases in these units, are cases involving default convictions where their judgments have not been actual notice. Such cases, which were not executed due to the lack of recognition and access to the convicted person, now constitute a large part of the older cases of these branches. Certainly one of the most effective legal tools for overcoming such an undesirable situation is the regulations governing the execution prescription. However, due to ambiguity in jurisprudence over the concept of "definitive verdict", this legal instrument is not well used and the Legal Department of the Judiciary has not been able to assist in resolving this dilemma by providing a proper interpretation of the provisions. On the contrary, it has added to the ambiguity of the field with its controversial and critical advisory opinions. In this article, in addition to exploring the concept of the definitive verdict, numerous opinions of the legal department in this field will be criticized, and eventually, it will be shown that default judgments along with other judgments commonly accepted as definitive and non-appealable are subject to execution time-lapse set forth in Article107 of the Islamic Penal Act, 2013.

Keywords

• Definitive and non-appealable verdicts
• Lapse of time
• Criminal default judgments
• Definitive judgment
• Injunction of suspending the enforcement of a judgment

Main Subjects

• Criminal Procedure
• Implementation of criminal sentences
• General criminal law