Almost a year after – it will be in June – the Constitutional Court (TC) endorsed the Amnesty Law with six votes in favor and four against, the guarantee court chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido faces another controversial issue that seems equally doomed to a resounding fracture.
The appeal for protection by the former State Attorney General against his sentence of two years of disqualification for revealing secrets is on the table and its mere admission to processing already generates division within the institution, as LA RAZÓN has been able to verify.
And sources from the TC consider that it should not even be admitted for processing, as it is a matter “of ordinary legality” in which the Supreme Court (TS) cannot be supplanted, which was the one that tried and convicted Álvaro García Ortiz for the leak of confidential data of the boyfriend of the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, businessman Alberto González Amador (the email in which he admitted the tax fraud that the prosecutor accused him of to try to reach an agreement and see the request reduced of conviction).
“It is a matter of pure and simple evaluation of the evidence,” point out other sources from the institution, who emphasize that in similar cases the Constitutional Court “has systematically rejected” the appeals “by attempting to turn the TC into a court of second instance.”
Two appeals before the TC
Two appeals against that conviction have reached the court of guarantees: the one filed by the Prosecutor’s Office and the request for protection presented by the State Attorney’s Office on behalf of the former attorney general. The first presentation fell to Judge María Luisa Segoviano, who at the inauguration of García Ortiz’s successor at the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Teresa Peramato, wished “a lot of encouragement” to the convicted person, a public show of support for which, according to some sources, he should refrain from participating in the processing of the appeal.
“It is an abstention from the book,” those same sources point out in this regard. But even if she doesn’t, everything indicates that once the procedure gets underway, it will be González Amador’s own lawyer who will challenge her.
In principle, admission must be decided in the First Section – which includes, in addition to Segoviano and Espejel, Conde-Pumpido. If one of them objects, the matter is raised to the Chamber (in this case, the First), with six magistrates. But it is enough for the president or three magistrates to request it for the decision to be transferred to the plenary session. Something that has not occurred to this day, although the general feeling is that the matter will end up in the Plenary.
Segoviano and his encouragement to García Ortiz
Segoviano’s abstention or recusal is not trivial, since given that Conde-Pumpido will foreseeably withdraw for affecting the request for protection of a member of the race when he was attorney general (as he did, for example, in the case of Dolores Delgado), if the magistrate also remained on the sidelines the balance between conservative and progressive magistrates would be absolute (five each). Or what is the same: in the event of a more than predictable tie, the debate would open on a possible casting vote (which only falls to the president of the institution, according to the organic law that regulates the institution) of the vice president, Inmaculada Montalbán.
In any case, admission can take a long time. This week the plenary activity has been reduced to a single session (last Tuesday) due to the visit to Spain of the president of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Mattias Guyomar. There was not even a Plenary Session of the First Chamber. And if that were not enough, next jurisdictional week has been suspended due to the visit to Brazil of several judges for a summit of Ibero-American jurists. Thus, at the earliest the matter would be addressed in the last week of May. But what is expected is that it will take even longer. “It is not urgent,” they point out from Domenico Scarlatti (headquarters of the institution).
Lawyer’s report
With the report of the TC lawyer on the admission for processing of García Ortiz’s appeal (if either of the two judges does not agree, they can request an alternative ruling), the admission process begins, in which it is normal for it to go ahead with the endorsement of the progressive majority.
Another thing will be the estimation of the resource. Although it would not have practical effects, since he has already paid the compensation to which he was sentenced and, by decision of his successor, Teresa Peramato, continues to serve as a Chamber prosecutor in the Supreme Court, for García Ortiz, the sources consulted point out, “it would mean winning the battle of the story.” “And it would further discredit the court,” add the sources who question this resource.