Pengakuan Bersalah dalam KUHAP 2025 dan Tradisi Pembuktian Eropa Kontinental

Abstract

Law Number 20 of 2025 concerning the Indonesian Code of Criminal Procedure introduces several procedural routes through which a defendant may acknowledge criminal responsibility and obtain a more expedited disposition. This development raises a central question for Indonesian criminal procedure, which has historically required judicial verification of material truth rather than treating a confession as a substitute for proof. This article examines the normative design of guilty-plea mechanisms under the 2025 Code, their compatibility with Continental European evidentiary traditions, and the procedural safeguards needed to reconcile efficiency with defendants’ rights. Using normative legal research with statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, the analysis focuses on Indonesia and selected models from Germany, France, and Italy. The study finds that Articles 78, 205, and 234 establish three distinct procedural constructions rather than a single guilty-plea model. Article 78 expressly requires support from at least two lawful items of evidence, while the other routes do not state an equivalent evidentiary threshold. The new Code also omits an explicit rule that a defendant’s statement alone cannot establish guilt and does not clearly regulate the evidentiary use of statements made in an unsuccessful guilty-plea process. These mechanisms can therefore be regarded as a limited adaptation within the Continental European tradition only if implementing rules preserve independent judicial verification, require corroborating evidence, exclude statements arising from failed pleas, guarantee legal assistance, and clarify inconsistent sentencing limits.