The Concept of Definitiveness of Verdicts and its Effect on the Prescription of Criminal Default Judgments:A Critique of the Legal Department of the Judiciary's Opinions

One of the major problems at present in the branches of criminal Judgments execution throughout the country, which have a significant volume of cases in these units, are cases involving default convictions and their judgments have not been actual notice. Such cases, which were not executed due to the lack of recognition and access to the convicted person, now constitute a large part of the older cases of these branches. Certainly one of the most effective legal tools for overcoming such an undesirable situation is the regulations governing the execution prescription. However, due to ambiguity in jurisprudence over the concept of "definitive verdict", this legal instrument is not well used and the Legal Department of the Judiciary has not been able to assist in resolving this dilemma by providing a proper interpretation of the provisions. On the contrary, it has added to the ambiguity of the field with its controversial and critical advisory opinions. In this article, in addition to exploring the concept of definitive verdict, numerous opinions of the legal department in this field will be criticized, and eventually, it will be shown that default judgments along with other judgments commonly accepted as definitive and non-appealable are subject to execution time lapse set forth in Article 107 of the Islamic Penal Act, 2013.