Aggravating and Mitigating Sentencing Factors at the ICTR--An Exploratory Analysis.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has been operating for nearly two decades now and has sentenced over sixty defendants. While the sentencing guidelines from the official Tribunal statute and rules of procedure are vague and indefinite, the court has established a sentencing jurisprudence of its own, especially when it comes to aggravating and mitigating factors. The use of these factors in sen-tencing have been questioned, so an exploratory analysis of what factors the court has considered and how they have done so was constructed. The results show a wide rang-ing list of both aggravating and mitigating factors without providing a strict sentencing structure. These sentencing factors may set a standard for future international courts sentencing defendants for the most heinous of crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]