THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2001
70% of trials in Vietnam have no defense lawyers
HANOI, Vietnam: About 70 per cent of trials, both criminal and civil, in Vietnam have no defense lawyers due to the heavy load of court cases and shortage of lawyers, an official said on Wednesday.
There are nearly 2,000 lawyers in the communist country, concentrated mostly in Hanoi and the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh city while 59 other cities and provinces have an average of a dozen lawyers each, said the justice ministry official.
There are almost no defense lawyers for trials handled by district level courts which cases in which offenses carry penalties of up to seven years in jail, the official said on customary condition of anonymity.
The official attributed the low rate of participation of defense lawyers in the trials to the heavy case load, shortage of lawyers and poor access of defendants to lawyers.
The official said that people in Vietnam don't have the habit of hiring lawyers for their defense and many poor defendants cannot afford them.
61 provincial courts and 562 district courts handle more than 100,000 trials a year, he said.
The official said the ministry is drafting a decree on legal assistance which he hoped would be introduced in 2002.
Under the decree, the legal assistance centers, which provide defense lawyers free of charge to poor defendants but are limited to the provincial level, will be expanded to the district level, he said. Justice officials in the villages will help provide legal advice in minor court cases, he said.
Under current laws, courts provide juvenile defendants or defendants whose offenses carry the death penalty with defense lawyers free of charge.
Trials in Vietnam are decided by a panel of judges. ( AP )
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