to plea bargains, for instance, only cases that would be punishable with a sentence of 15 years or less.127 56. In an OSCE participating State in the South-Caucasus region, it was reported that overloaded public defenders often persuade defendants to admit guilt and to proceed with an expedited trial procedure, which results in the defendant being sentenced to no more than one-third of the normal sentence.128 As a result, innocent people sometimes plead guilty to crimes they did not commit.129 57. Capacity and resources are not the only factors that undermine the quality of legal advice and representation, key safeguards against torture or ill-treatment. This is particularly the case in countries where there are serious concerns about the independence of criminal lawyers. In one OSCE participating State from the Central Asian region, for example, where the trial waiver system was introduced in 2017, there is a requirement for legal assistance to conclude a plea bargain. However, as alluded to in the previous section, concerns have been raised for this particular state over the use of “pocket lawyers”, who collude with investigators to secure guilty verdicts.130 In another OSCE participating State from the same region, lawyers are appointed ex officio, which does not ensure the independence and quality required for an effective defence, including during plea bargain procedures. In practice, lawyers often do not provide legal assistance to their clients, but simply sign procedural documents of bodies of inquiry or investigation and do not appeal against human rights violations that might occur during detention or investigation.131 In countries where alleging torture and excluding torture evidence during the trial processes is already difficult, it is easy to see how even fewer safeguards presented by trial waiver systems can make it even more difficult to identifying whether plea deals were made voluntarily in practice. 58. In effect, trial waivers mean that questions of whether evidence has been obtained by torture and whether safeguards – such as access to a lawyer – have been complied with, may be ignored. The principal safeguard employed by states to mitigate those risks and uphold such safeguards in the trial waiver system is judicial review of the plea bargain. All of the countries surveyed required some form of judicial review of the trial waiver. These involve varying degrees of scrutiny and judicial powers over the deal, but all require the judge to ensure the voluntariness of 127 128 129 130 Questionnaire response APADOR CH (Romania) (2019). Questionnaire response Helsinki Association of Armenia (Armenia) (2019). Ibid. Ruslan Khakimov, “The Legal Profession in Kyrgyzstan”, background report was written at the request of ODIHR for the Workshop on Reform of the Legal Profession. 131 Questionnaire Response Nota Bene (Tajikistan) (2019). 41