The Accused’s Attire in the Process of Criminal Proceedings; the Opposition of Practice Vis-à-vis Principles

In the dignity-oriented model of proceedings, the accused or suspected person enjoys some fundamental rights which cannot be taken away from him/her merely by him/her being arrested, accused or apprehended. One of these rights is the right to wear personal, normal, optional clothing; this shall be in a manner which no entity or agency is authorized to deprive him/her of this right and coerce him/her to put on “criminal garb. This is so due to the fact that until is proven otherwise, the accused is assumed innocent and his/her outfit shall represent this state of guiltlessness. It means, the accused shall be treated under the aegis of the presumption of innocence not the presumption of criminality; ergo, the outfit of the accused plays a significant role in his/ her quality of defense, the judicial decision and the public judgment. Notwithstanding, in the proceedings of the current Iranian criminal justice system, the accused is forced to wear criminal clothes— something that leads into them and their relatives being subject to negative labelling and misjudgment. Apropos of the question “what is the legal base of the current practice”, the present study identified that not only the current practice is not in harmony with the national codes and the international standards, but also it is in conflict with the strategic principles of the criminal procedures, particularly human dignity, the presumption of innocence, procedural legality, equality of arms, impartiality and the protection of citizenship rights. In this regard, it is a particular desideratum that the present practice gets more aligned with the universal standards and the strategic principles.