With the controversial reform of the ‘only yes is yes’ law in the environment and, above all, its “unwanted effects”, as admitted by the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, the Supreme Court takes the floor this Tuesday. And it does so to rule on the first sentence reductions carried out by the courts of instance in the months in which the new penological framework of the law on sexual freedom was in force.
After more than 1,000 sentence reductions for sexual offenders -a total of 1,079, according to the official count as of May 1st- and more than one hundred releases due to the application of the “only yes is yes” law, the Plenary of the Second Chamber (Criminal) addresses until Wednesday the deliberation of up to 29 appeals presented by the Prosecutor’s Office and the parties on specific cases. The objective is to establish a definitive doctrine that affects the rest of the sentences.
Just a month and a half before the general elections, what comes out in this conclave chaired by Manuel Marchena -convened before the 23-J elections are brought forward- will have an undoubted political repercussion in this permanent state of pre-campaign. This despite the fact that the PSOE carried out a recent counter-reform, with the support of the PP, of the law promoted by Minister Irene Montero (Unidas Podemos) to try to stem the bleeding of sentence reviews and the social alarm generated.
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Specifically, the Chamber will review the criteria applied by the provincial courts and the superior courts of justice in compliance with the norm promoted by Equality. So far, the pronouncements of the high court have not affected these final sentences, but now it is time to analyze the validity of all those decisions that the judges have been adopting since last November, forced by the Montero reform and by the penal principle that obliges to apply the law retroactively as long as it is favorable to the accused.
Of the first 29 appeals, each of the members of the Chamber will be the rapporteur for two issues, while President Manuel Marchena will be for one, so it is quite likely that division may occur in some cases. Of the resources that affect cases sentenced in judicial bodies of ten communities, 15 are related to sexual crimes against minors.
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The new penal reform urged by the PSOE, and which caused its umpteenth disagreement with its partners in the United Podemos Government, makes it possible to prevent future cases of sexual assault from charging lower penalties. To avoid this, a subtype was introduced in the crime of sexual assault to re-include the circumstances of violence or intimidation.
Now, the Plenary of the Second Chamber must decide, among other issues of a technical nature, the validity of the criteria adopted by the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, to try to stop the bleeding of sales. So far, the Public Ministry has filed more than 230 appeals. The instructions issued by the attorney general go through the understanding that in those cases in which the sentence imposed is also taxable in accordance with the regulation resulting from the reform, the sentence will not be reviewed.
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