The Supreme Court has agreed this Wednesday to reject the appeals raised by the Prosecutor’s Office against the reductions in sentences agreed by lower courts in application of the lthe law of only yes is yes. The plenary session of the Criminal Chamber has only accepted one of the appeals presented by the prosecutor and it was because the judges had made a mistake when counting the sentence and the high court has now raised it. In the resolutions agreed on this Wednesday, the Supreme Court puts forward the criminal principle that establishes that the law that is most favorable to him must be applied to the prisoner and refuses to apply the transitory provision of the 1995 Penal Code that the Prosecutor’s Office defended.
The decision of the high court is a closed endorsement of the criteria used by the provincial courts that have reduced sentences for sexual offenders in application of the law of only yes is yes, and a blow to the position of the Prosecutor’s Office. By extension, the Supreme Court’s thesis also supposes, in the middle of the campaign for the general elections on July 23, a setback for the Ministry of Equality, which since the beginning of the trail of reductions accused the judges who adopted them of misapplying the law. “The Supreme Court rejects the unanimous criteria of the Prosecutor’s Office regarding the validity of the transitory law. It is bad news ”, Montero has written on his Twitter account.
The penal reform promoted by Equality has already been modified based on a proposal promoted by the PSOE, which aggravates the punishment for attacks with violence or intimidation or when the victim has their will annulled, but this new rule only applies to attacks committed after its entry into force (April 29). For the previous ones, the sentence reviews continue, so the bases that the Supreme Court has laid this Wednesday are essential to limit the discrepancies in criteria between the courts.
The Supreme Court had already ruled on 75 appeals, which had been resolved with 28 reductions in sentences and with 47 sentences that maintained the sentences that were set before the reform. But all these pronouncements had been about sentences that were not final when the sexual freedom law came into force.
Although in some of these first sentences the Supreme Court indicated that the sentence reductions were “mandatory”, both for firm convictions and for those that are not, in several of its subsequent resolutions it qualified this statement and advanced that the arrival of appeals on final judgments required setting a new criterion. This is what the Criminal Chamber has studied for the first time this week.
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The 15 magistrates that make it up have reviewed a total of 29 appeals between Tuesday and Wednesday, of which seven were presented by the Prosecutor’s Office against the decision of other courts to reduce the punishment of aggressors and 22 are appeals from convicted persons who demanded reductions. sentences rejected by the judges. In all but one (due to a judicial error) they have maintained the criteria of the provincial hearings.
One of the debates that the room has addressed is how the fact that the law of only yes is yes lacked a transitory provision, similar to the one included in the 1995 Penal Code reform, which established that when the sentence imposed on the aggressor is still within the range provided for that crime by the new Penal Code, the penalty is not lowered. punishment. The Prosecutor’s Office defends that, although the norm promoted by the Ministry of Equality did not include it, that provision should be applied because that is how the high court has established it for other penal reforms. The Supreme Court, however, has ruled out that it can be brought to law of only yes is yes because, according to sources in the room, it would mean a repeal de facto of article 2.2 of the Criminal Code, which includes the retroactivity of the law most favorable to the accused.
The Criminal Chamber has only broken its unanimity in one of the appeals, for which magistrate Andrés Palomo was a rapporteur, who proposed to revoke the reduction in punishment for a man sentenced to 12 years in prison for penetrative sexual assault, the minimum sentence that established the 1995 Penal Code for that crime, as well as two other sentences of six years each for the assault committed by two other people who could not be identified. In total, the man had a sentence of 24 years in prison that the Madrid Court reduced to 15. Magistrate Palomo and four other judges in the room (Ana Ferrer, Susana Polo, Andrés Martínez de Arrieta and Antonio del Moral) did not share the reduction, but the other 11 magistrates have and have imposed their criteria.
The Prosecutor’s Office will not rule on the Supreme Court’s resolutions until its full content is known, but sources close to the public prosecutor’s office have shown their surprise at the fact that the 15 magistrates of the Criminal Chamber have refused to apply the criteria of the 1995 transitory provision to despite the fact that in recent judgments signed by different magistrates they were favorable to extending these criteria to the law of only yes is yes.
The Supreme Court does agree with the prosecutors in one matter: the law of only yes is yes imposed on sexual offenders the loss of parental authority over their children, so if the rule is applied for the benefit of the prisoner to reduce his sentence, this precept must also be applied and that right withdrawn.
According to the latest balance of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), until May 1, 1,079 reductions and 108 releases had been agreed. Sources from the governing body of the judges raise this figure to 1,120 reductions and 114 released, according to the latest data provided by the Supreme Court, the higher courts and the provincial courts.
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