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42 Harv. Int'l L. J. 535 (2001)
To Establish Incredible Events by Credible Evidence: The Use of Affidavit Testimony in Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal Proceedings

handle is hein.journals/hilj42 and id is 541 raw text is: VOLUME 42, NUMBER 2, SUMMER 2001 To Establish Incredible Events by Credible Evidence*: The Use of Affidavit Testimony in Yugoslavia War Crimes Tribunal Proceedings Patricia M. Wald** The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been in existence for over eight years, and for the past three has been oper- ating at full throttle. As of April 2001, the Tribunal has pronounced final judgment on six defendants; the cases of seven others are on appeal; seven are still on trial; four are awaiting sentences; sixteen defendants are awaiting trial; thirty-seven are in custody; and three are on provisional release. Most ICTY trials however, have been intolerably long, ranging from 10 to 224 days, but averaging 107 working days. The extended length of trials has many causes. Sometimes several defendants are tried together and sometimes events in many villages or occurring at disparate times are grouped together in a single indictment, requiring an extensive parade of witnesses. Some tri- als have featured over 200 witnesses, and seven of the ten trials completed thus far have had over 100 live witnesses. The ICTY Statute requires that trial judges sit in panels of three so that its current nine trial judges can conduct a maximum of three trials at one time. Given present time spans, that means only three or four trials a year.' * TELFORD TAYLOR, THE ANATOMY OF THE NUREMBERG TRIALs 54 (1992) (quoting Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg Military High Criminal Trials) (Unless we write the record of this move- ment with clarity and precision, we cannot blame the future if in days of peace it finds incredible the accusatory generalities uttered during the war. We must establish incredible events by credible evi- dence.). ** Judge, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY); Former Chief Judge, United Stares Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. B.A., Connecticut College, 1948; LL.B., Yale Law School, 1951. 1 wish to thank my legal assistant, Michelle Jarvis, for her valuable help in researching and critiquing this piece. The views expressed herein, of course, are mine, and not necessarily those of the Tribunal or the United Nations (UYN). 1. The UN Security Council has recently voted to supplement the sixteen ICTY permanent judges (seven sit in the Appeals Chamber) with a pool of twenty-seven adlitem judges who may be assigned to a single or several trials. U.N. SCOR Res. 1329, U.N. Doc. S/RES/1329 (2000). According to estimates, this will permit the Tribunal to finish its anticipated trials by 2007 instead of 2016. Report on the Opera- tion of the International Trbunal for the Former Yugoslavia, submitted by Judge ClaudeJorda, President, on behalf of the Tribunal, U.N. GAOR, 55th Sess., Agenda Item 52, at para. 35, 111, U.N. Doc. A/55/382- S/2000/865 (2000). It will allow for a maximum of six trials to proceed simultaneously. See S. Res. 1329, U.N. SCOR, 4240th Mtg., Annex I, art. 12, U.N. Doc. S/RES/1329 (2000).

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