The Sentencing Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone

GEORGIA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW VOLUME 42 2014 NUMBER 3 ARTICLES THE SENTENCING LEGACY OF THE SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE Shahram Dana* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 617 II. BACKGROUND: PEACE AGREEMENTS AND BLANKET AMNESTIES FAIL TO STOP CONFLICT OR ATROCITIES .................... 619 III. FROM AMNESTY TO ACCOUNTABILITY: A UNIQUE COURT IS BORN ............................................................................................... 622 A. The Head of State Trial: Prosecutor v. Charles Taylor ............ 623 1. The Crimes ......................................................................... 623 2. The Punishment.................................................................. 625 B. The RUF Trial: Prosecutor v. Sesay, Kallon & Gbao .............. 632 1. The Crimes ......................................................................... 632 2. The Punishment.................................................................. 633 C. The AFRC Trial: Prosecutor v. Brima, Kamara & Kanu ......... 640 1. The Crimes ......................................................................... 640 2. The Punishment.................................................................. 641 * Senior Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University; Visiting Scholar, Vanderbilt University Law School (Spring 2015); former United Nations Associate Legal Officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. I wish to thank Diane Marie Amann, Nancy Combs, Mark Drumbl, Sasha Greenawalt, Adil Haque, Saira Mohamed, and William Mock for their helpful comments. Excellent research support was provided by my research assistants Shayan Davoudi, Chandra Crtichelow Duncan, and Katarina Durcova. 615 616 GA. J. INT’L & COMP. L. [Vol. 42:615 D. The CDF Trial: Prosecutor v. Fofana & Kondewa .................. 645 1. The Crimes ......................................................................... 645 2. The Punishment.................................................................. 649 IV. THE SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE’S SENTENCING LEGACY ........................................................................................... 657 A. Systematizing the Sentencing Jurisprudence ............................ 660 1. Punishment Philosophy...................................................... 660 2. Constitutive Sentencing Considerations ............................ 663 a. Unpacking Gravity: A Colorless Litmus Test.............. 664 b. Individual Circumstances & Aggravating and Mitigating Factors: Rebuilding Collapsed Categories ................................................................... 666 3. Contributions to the Law of Sentencing in ICL ................. 670 B. The Misconceived Notion of Global Sentence .......................... 673 C. Missed Opportunities to Localize International Justice ........... 675 V. NORMATIVE CRITIQUES OF SCSL’S SENTENCING LEGACY ........... 677 A. Legalizing Social Narratives .................................................... 677 B. Punitive Model Reorientation .................................................. 679 C. Sentencing Framework Deficit ................................................. 683 VI. CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 685 2014] THE SENTENCING LEGACY OF THE SCSL 617 The wound is the place where the Light enters you. – Rumi I. INTRODUCTION 150,000 human beings slaughtered; 200,000 women raped; thousands of limbs amputated; countless children forced to kill their own parents, forced into sexual slavery, and forced into the battlefields; and 2.6 million persons displaced.1 These are just some of the gruesome realities of an unforgiving war that consumed Sierra Leone for more than ten years. There is another number of significance: Nine. That is the number of individuals held criminally responsible for these atrocities.2 After ten years and spending an estimated $250 million dollars,3 the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) convicted and sentenced just nine men. With all trial and appeals at the SCSL now complete,4 we are afforded an opportunity to evaluate its legacy. While commentators have reviewed the work of the SCSL from a variety of perspectives, the vantage point provided from an examination of its sentencing legacy has been largely ignored.5 The 1 The war caused 12% of Sierra Leone’s population to flee to neighboring countries and rendered homeless more than half of those that remained. See MARY KALDOR & JAMES VINCENT, UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, CASE STUDY: SIERRA LEONE (2006); see also TIM KELSALL, CULTURE UNDER CROSS-EXAMINATION: INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE AND THE SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE 29 (2009) (discussing mutilations, decapitations, immolations, physical and sexual humiliation, sexual slavery and limb amputation); IAN SMILLIE ET AL., THE HEART OF THE MATTER: SIERRA LEONE, DIAMONDS & HUMAN SECURITY 9 (2000) (discussing the devastating nature of the conflict); Nicole Fritz & Alison Smith, Current Apathy for Coming Anarchy: Building the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 25 FORDHAM INT’L L.J. 391, 394 (2001) (discussing a campaign of terror against civilians that included abducting children, forced prostitution, and the amputation of limbs); JOHN L. HIRSCH, SIERRA LEONE: DIAMONDS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY 14–15 (2001) (discussing the “relentless terror, loss of life, and indiscriminate amputations” that colored the conflict); Nsongurua J. Udombana, Globalization of Justice and The Special Court for Sierra Leone’s War Crimes, 17 EMORY INT’L L. REV. 55, 71 (2003) (discussing the psychological effects that accompany the brutal nature of the conflict). 2 Charles Jalloh, Special Court for Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, 32 MICH. J. INT’L L. 395 (2011) (arguing that “the limited number of persons” prosecuted is a “serious shortcoming” of the Special Court for Sierra Leone). 3 Stuart Ford, How Leadership in International Criminal Law is Shifting from the United States to Europe and Asia, 55 ST. LOUIS U. L.J. 953, 975 (2011). 4 THE SPECIAL COURT FOR SIERRA LEONE, ABOUT, http://www.sc-sl.org/ABOUT/tabid/70/ Default.aspx (last visited Apr. 15, 2014). 5 While research and scholarship on ICL continues to proliferate, the law of punishment and sentencing in ICL still receives scant treatment in law review articles, books, and treatises. Even legacy projects specific to the SCSL largely ignore systematic and rigorous treatment of the SCSL’s sentencing jurisprudence. When one considers that a perpetrator’s punishment is 618 GA. J. INT’L & COMP. L. [Vol. 42:615 SCSL’s legacy includes a rich and potent sentencing jurisprudence that can reshape and stabilize punishment and sentencing in international criminal law (ICL). This Article seeks to uncover these gems from the SCSL’s s (...truncated)