Joint criminal enterprise (JCE) is a legal doctrine used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to prosecute political and military leaders for mass war crimes, including genocide, committed during the Yugoslav wars 1991-1999.
This doctrine considers each member of an organized group individually responsible for crimes committed by group within the common plan or purpose. For example, "if three people commit a bank robbery and one fatally shoots a person in the process, the law considers all guilty of murder."
Read more about Joint Criminal Enterprise: Definition, Post World War II Trials, Post Yugoslav War Trials, Rwandan Genocide Trials, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words joint, criminal and/or enterprise:
“There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.”
—Clifford Irving (b. 1930)
“Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)