The Admissibility Control of Evidentiary Agreements in Criminal Procedure from an Epistemic Perspective

Evidentiary agreements are procedural acts in which the parties establish facts and circumstances relevant to the judgment of the case that are not subject to dispute and will not be discussed during oral proceedings. In the field of criminal procedure, the legitimization of punitive power must comply with the protection of constitutional rights, aiming at the maximum reduction of judicial errors. Considering that, evidentiary agreements face obstacles concerning the validation of truth as they are based on consensus between prosecution and defense, and not necessarily on the accurate verification of facts that ensures the correspondence of the statements made with the empirical world. Therefore, and through an approach limited to the analysis of normative systems in Latin American countries, the present study seeks to comprehend the scope of the admissibility judgment — or simply, the validity — of evidentiary agreements in view of judicial epistemology. This epistemological framework seeks to minimize judicial errors resulting from the acceptance of factual statements as true without cognitive verification, while preserving the utilitarian nature of such an instrument, which values procedural simplification and cost-efficiency, ultimately safeguarding a fair decision at the conclusion of the trial.

Keywords
Evidentiary agreements; admissibility control; judicial epistemology