The prosecution has asked this Monday to the Supreme Court to reject the objection raised by six of those accused of rebellion in the cause of the procés against Manuel Marchena, the president of the tribunal that will prosecute the facts and accuse of having links with the PP. The public ministry considers that there is no reason to take away Marchena of the court and asks the Supreme to reject the challenge. The prosecution considers that the written statement submitted by the defenses of the pro-independence leaders is “extremely chary of arguments” and does not justify “objectively” the doubts about the impartiality of the president of the Criminal Chamber.
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The prisoners of ‘procés’ used the resignation of Marchena to question the justice of The one Supreme issue the challenge against Marchena of the leaders of ‘procés’ for the ‘whatsapp’ of Cosidó Married recognizes that the choice of Marchena them has been a “wear-out electoral and party”
The challenges were raised a week ago by the vice-president of the Catalan government, Oriol Junqueras, the exconsellers Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, the former president of the ANC, Jordi Sànchez, and the president of Omnium Cultural, Jordi Cuixart, following the leaking of a message from WhatsApp the spokesman of the PP in the Senate, Ignacio Cosidó, in which it was presumed that the possible appointment of Marchena as president of the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), agreed with the PSOE, it would allow the PP to have under control the Supreme. Lawyers for these accused, currently in prison, reported the alleged links of Marchena with the PP, so that in the case of maintaining the composition of the tribunal ensures that there is no guarantee that they may be judged with impartiality, something that vulneraría their rights to a fair trial.
The public prosecutor’s office cites case law of the Constitutional and Supreme to remember that it is not enough that the doubts or suspicions about the impartiality of the judge “arising in the minds of those who object to”, but that it is necessary to determine, on a case to case basis, if they reach a consistency such that it allows to affirm that they are “objectively and legitimately justified”. And, in this case, according to the prosecution, they are not. For the public ministry, the questions that expose the pro-independence “are pure and free speculations of a third party who makes a judgment from inference about the eventual personal behavior of those who with their own actions, has proved not only his own personal and intellectual independence, but his defense of the independence of the judiciary in general”.
The allegation of partiality of Marchena is, according to the prosecutors, “impractical” in that it does not refers to any action, expression or utterance of the same in the public sphere of their duties, or in private of his personal life, which will move away from “the absolute impartiality and ajenidad the object of the process and the people in it are affected by or somehow involved”, points to the public ministry, which considers that the mere procedure used to express the alleged links of the judge “with a certain ideology” is “constitutionally illegitimate”. “Beyond speculating on the margin of the channel of the proceedings, and their rules, they ignore the debate regulated and proper contradiction to your arguments, thus putting in danger —without an objective foundation— trust of citizens to their courts,” criticized the prosecution of the defenses.
The prosecution recalls that the alleged links of Marchena with the PP who report processed by rebellion do not arise from public demonstrations from the judge recused, but messages sent out by “unidentified persons” that have been forwarded by Cosidó to various senators of his party. “Regardless of any assessment on its content and on whether they reflect what is already found in the intention of the recusantes, such messages are not to be regarded as an element in proof of the interest of the referred magistrate in a concrete outcome of the process,” says the letter, signed by the fiscal Consuelo Madrigal and Fidel String. “It is not possible to rationally be attributed to the judge Marchena, speculative –and without a modicum of seriousness – specific political ideas or affinities of thought, which he himself has never expressed with such or facts, and much less in the work of the court”, they said.
The objections raised by the defendants, according to the public ministry, do not demonstrate the alleged ideological affinity of Marchena towards the PP, but even if it did, would not be reason for the disqualification, because that party is not involved in the case opened against the procés. In front of the harsh criticisms launched against the accused, the statement praised the “dignified and generous renunciation” of the magistrate “to the highest judicial office that was proposed”. This attitude demonstrates, according to the prosecutors ‘ absolute estrangement with the linkage that is intended to be attributed, and a personal involvement in the defence of judicial independence and the appearance in public of that independence”. “It is a gesture of greater disengagement with political affinities that they suspect that the resignation of the highest honor in the professional career of a judge, in safeguard, not a real independence is unquestionable and publicly unquestioned, but his mere appearance,” concludes the public ministry.
