Plea Bargaining in Việt Nam: Who Actually Negotiates With the State?

For the two sides to negotiate and bargain as they would in a bilateral contract, the prosecution and the accused should have equal standing. It is highly questionable whether suspects in Việt Nam possess sufficient power to counterbalance the authorities.

Equality in legal proceedings demands that both sides have the same opportunity to present evidence, defend their interests, and challenge opposing arguments. Suspects entering negotiations in criminal cases require adequate legal assistance to understand their rights, their lawful interests, and the severe consequences of a guilty plea. 

But equality is meaningless without institutional safeguards to prevent the prosecution from overwhelming the accused. This necessitates an independent judiciary, a free press for public scrutiny, and effective checks on state authority to prevent abuses.

A suspect’s voluntary guilty plea can only be considered a decision made on equal legal footing within a system that maintains these checks and balances. Without them, a plea is merely the product of an overwhelming imbalance of power.

Currently in Việt Nam, public understanding of the law remains limited, access to legal representation is not guaranteed, and the legal profession faces increasing restrictions. If suspects are left alone with prosecutors, they may admit to offenses they do not even understand. [1] 

Hence, plea bargaining should not be introduced under these conditions.

Manipulated Pleas and Wrongful Convictions

The inequality described above introduces the greatest risk associated with plea bargaining: coerced admissions of guilt and wrongful convictions. Both are already persistent issues within Việt Nam’s justice system.

Generally, a valid plea agreement must meet three conditions: [2] [3]

• The defendant must understand the nature of the charges, the associated penalties, and the rights forfeited by pleading guilty.
• The plea must be voluntary, rather than the result of force, threats, or promises outside the agreement.
• The defendant must have actually committed the offense.

Because bargaining is tied to incentives, coercion can substantially distort the balance of justice. Author Martin Yant has described how prosecutors use coercive tactics in plea bargaining. [4] People who might otherwise be acquitted—or who are genuinely innocent—may nonetheless plead guilty.

Fear explains this contradiction. By escalating the severity of charges, prosecutors can apply psychological pressure and allege offenses far more serious than the evidence supports. This fear creates an opening for manipulation through the “deals” prosecutors offer. To avoid a grueling trial and the risk of an extremely harsh sentence, such as the death penalty, defendants frequently accept these offers and plead guilty.

One striking example comes from a report by the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University School of Law. Of 1,428 people exonerated since 1989, 151 had pleaded guilty to acts they did not commit. [5]

Coerced confessions have long undermined Việt Nam’s justice system and contributed to countless wrongful convictions. [6] [7] Introducing plea bargaining into this environment threatens to worsen an already dire situation.

A Sharply Diminished Role for the Courts

The presumption of innocence emphasizes the responsibility of the courts to establish guilt through a fair trial. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights requires that guilt be “proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.” [8] 

Domestically, Article 13 of Việt Nam’s 2015 Criminal Procedure Code likewise establishes that the accused must be protected from a finding of guilt until the charge is proved transparently, fully, and through proper legal procedures. [9] It strictly states that a person is guilty only once there is a “legally effective conviction by a court.”

Plea bargaining in Việt Nam substantially undermines this foundation. It is a private process that either completely excludes a neutral third party—the court—or severely limits its role compared to an ordinary public trial. It allows a judgment without requiring the judiciary to examine the evidence in detail.

In practice, plea negotiations in Việt Nam occur behind closed doors, are never aired in open court, provide no mechanism for reopening a case, and lack specific rules defining the rights and obligations of participants.

These procedural gaps and this lack of transparency leave defendants in Việt Nam entirely unprotected. To secure a bargain, defendants are required to surrender important procedural safeguards designed to ensure accuracy and fairness. They must admit guilt, waive their right to remain silent, forfeit the right to confront witnesses, and relinquish their right to a public trial.

In a justice system like that of Việt Nam, where the courts already lack independence, removing a defendant’s final opportunity to speak publicly would be disastrous. It would leave the entire judicial process to unfold inside the interrogation room.

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Đan Thanh wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on September 30, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine translated it into English.