The judge of the National Court María Tardón sees a “notable complexity” and a “special legal significance” in the investigation of the massive and irregular entry of immigrants into Ceuta last July. That is the reason argued by the head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 3 to dismiss the reform appeals filed by the Libertad y Justicia association and the Vox political party against her latest decision to maintain the unification of the representation of popular accusations in the procedure also given the “plurality of parties”, as stated in a ruling, to which LA RAZÓN has had access.
The Libertad y Justicia association specifically opposed Tardón’s decision to endorse Iustitia Europa as the formation that assumed the representation of the unified popular accusation – it was the first to file a complaint denouncing the facts -, alleging that it is a “political party.”
Vox, for its part, also opposed the same decision by maintaining that there are no circumstances that justify forcing all accusations to act under a common defense and that this limits the exercise of the popular accusation because, it says, there is no convergence of common interests between the accusations and that they are incompatible with each other.
But Tardón already defended that his decision responded to “legitimate purposes of procedural organization” with the objective of “avoiding duplicity, preventing repetitive actions, rationalizing the intervention of multiple popular accusations and preventing undue delays.”
Now, the judge, who alleges the same arguments, once again rejects the thesis of the appeals by also pointing out that all the accusations filed pursue the same claim and that coordination is especially justified in a procedure like this of “notable complexity.”
The judge explains, first of all, that the decision to unify the representation and legal direction of the accusations is “expressly provided for by the legislator” and “has been repeatedly endorsed by jurisprudence, being a legitimate instrument to make compatible the right of access to the process with the demands derived from its correct processing” and that its purpose is none other than “to guarantee the proper development of the criminal process.”
Tardón argues that the agreed unification “does not violate the right to effective judicial protection nor does it empty the exercise of popular action of content.” In fact, it explains that it is not “sustainable” to affirm that the unification of the accusations requires the concurrence of “exceptional situations or exhaustive accreditation of an immediate risk of paralyzing the procedure.”
In this way, it also insists that all of them pursue “essentially” the same claim, that this constitutes a “budget” that enables this instruction to assess the convenience of a coordinated procedural situation and that the popular action pursues the “protection of legality and the public interest in the prosecution of crimes.” However, it considers that its decision has a “sufficient and fully understandable motivation” and cites an order from the Supreme Court that supports the unification of accusations when there is a convergence of interests and considers that a common defense can contribute to the good order of the procedure and avoid undue delays.
On the other hand, Libertad y Justicia also appealed – like the political party Ahora España – the amount of bail imposed to exercise the popular accusation, considering it “inadequate”, the period of five calendar days granted to reach an agreement by detailing that it “violates procedural rules”, and some aspects of the partial secrecy of the proceedings by alleging that it must have a limited duration – not exceeding one month except for extensions.
These are allegations that Tardón rejects by explaining, on the one hand, that the bail is the same as that which has been required for the rest of the popular accusations and that its requirement constitutes an “ordinary legal requirement for the exercise of the popular action, the imposition of which does not have a sanctioning nature or restricts fundamental rights, but rather operates as a guarantee inherent to the legal regime of said institution.”
On the other hand, it details that the determination of the amount of the bail corresponds to the “prudent discretion of the judicial body” that hears the case and that in the present case there is no “arbitrariness, error or disproportion” that justifies the review of the decision already adopted and much less “without proving the existence of an effective violation of rights.”