Ok, say I’m in Ecuador and I get busted for smuggling pot. I sit in prison for three years before I even go to trial, which is the norm for most of these countries. Then I go to trial and I’m sentenced to 10 years. Am I going to be doing ten more years or will that three years be applied to my ten years as “time served”?
I know it’s probably different from country to country, so lets use Ecuador as the example.
The sample is small, but it would appear that Ecuadorean law does take account of time served.
Rigoberto Acosta Calderón, a Colombian national, was arrested on a drugs charge in November 1989 and detained on remand until December 1994. Despite the judge issuing an aquittal ruling following a preliminary hearing in December 1993, Mr. Calderón was found guilty by the Criminal Court in December 1994 and sentenced to nine years in prison.
He was released in July 1996 ‘due to having served part of his sentence as a remand prisoner’.
Link.
I would guess in any civilised country time served before sentencing is always counted towrds the total of the sentence. I cannot imagine otherwise.
It depends who your third world country’s laws are based upon. If its a common law country; then yes, if its a civil law country then you are in trouble.
Nope. In a civil law country time served normally counts against the sentence. And Ecuador, in the OP example, is a civil law country.
I too would expect that it would be the case everywhere, including third world countries (except for political prisoners and such), but since I don’t know that for sure, I couldn’t tell if it’s true.
Can you explain? Are you saying civil law countries do not count time served? Because in Spain time spent in prison awaiting trial is certainly computed as part of the sentence and I have a difficult time believing it would not be so in other countries.
Can you provide some evidence?
I think you may conflating the issue of being able to make bail/bond and be free during the investigation, and up to trial which is much more uncommon in civil law countries than in common law countries with the OP’s question. Most countries I know of do contemplate the distinction of being remanded before trial as a non-punitive measure (to avoid treating the remanded person as having been found guilty and convicted) and time served laws. A few examples:
Colombian Penal Code Article 37, 3 (convenience translation)
The remand is not considered a penalty. However if the remanded person is found guilty of a crime and is sentenced, then the time spent detained under remand will be taken into account as time served.
Mexican Federal Penal Code Article 25 (convenience translation)
The time spent in preventive prision (remand) will be computed as time served for the crime sentenced or any other criminal action punishable by prision, even if these actions are prior to the preventive incarceration
Article 137 of the Italian Penal code
The Cautinary Custody (remand) will be computed as time served for any sentence consisting of arrest or prision.
i will check up on more examples…
I have a vague recollection of a case in Spain which went something like this: Guy is preventive prison awaiting trial for case A. In the meanwhile he is also accused and set for trial for case B. He is cleared in case A but sentenced to serve jail time in case B. His lawyer alleges that time served in preventive imprisonment should count towards the sentence. The accusation alleges it should not compute as it was not related to the case being tried. The case is appealed and finally the superior or supreme court rules the time should and does compute because otherwise it would be unjust.
Now, I suppose that if the guy had been in preventive prison for some months, then gone out and committed a crime, maybe the result would have been different because it would be against public policy to have guys out there who had already served time and could now go commit crimes without forther punishment.
Dang! Letting my commonlawcentrism show! To be fair Civil Law dose not have as strong a concept of individual rights and protections as the common law dose. But then to be even fairer, common law protections were developed due to the Star Chamber court.
In India, I have seen the quantum of jail term always adjusted for the time already spent in Jail.
I am not a legal expert, but I think it is the norm here.
^
India being a common law country.