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:
“What’s a joint of mutton or two in a whole Lent?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)
“The chief lesson of the Depression should never be forgotten. Even our liberty-loving American people will sacrifice their freedom and their democratic principles if their security and their very lives are threatened by another breakdown of our free enterprise system. We can no more afford another general depression than we can afford another total war, if democracy is to survive.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)