Pedro Nunes / Lusa
Former Prime Minister José Sócrates
The Lisbon Court of Appeal accused José Sócrates of successive dilatory acts to postpone trial. However, in many cases, it is the system itself, which favors “those who do not want to be judged within a reasonable time”.
José Sócrates was exactly 10 years ago at Lisbon airport, when arriving from Paris.
A decade later The trial hasn’t started yet of Operation Marquês, a process marked by successive resources of the former Prime Minister.
Speaking to the newspaper, the former Attorney General of the Republic José Cunha Rodrigues says that this scenario of successive postponements is to blame system that “gives guarantees to those who do not want to be judged within a reasonable time”.
In the same newspaper, Paulo Dá Mesquita says that in other countries this does not happen.
The jurist explains that, in Anglo-Saxon countries, for example, abuse of resources, requests and other similar maneuvers by lawyers or prosecutors can give rise to disciplinary sanctions, including removal from processes where they practice the so-called “abuse of rights”.
José Cunha Rodrigues highlights this idea, lamenting that, “unlike most European countries”, the Portuguese system distrust the judgebureaucratizing the process and limiting its margin of appreciation: “It is one of the reasons why resources are used as dilatory expedients and lead to a significant number of complex processes ending in prescription”.
In the opinion of the former PGR, “the judge should have the power to dissuade misuse and abuse of the process, which would include the possibility of deciding not to hear the appeal”.
As Público states, the Government promised measures aimed at reducing procedural expedients that delay processes.
However, details on the subject are not yet known..
TRL changing the paradigm?
This Wednesday, Joseph Socrates saw yet another complaint to the Lisbon Court of Appeal (TRL) rejected, in a ruling in which the group of judges accused the former prime minister of trying to “delaying in a manifestly abusive and blatant way” going to trial.
A “exhaust valve” which the TRL resorted to, to refuse, to consider yet another complaint from the former prime minister is a legal mechanism that, in the opinion of a former advisor to the Supreme Court of Justice heard by Público, should be used much more frequently.
The Appeal judges rejected José Sócrates’ new complaint, with the collective criticizing in the ruling what they classified as “a manifestly dilatory act”, stressing that “it is not legally permissible to present successive complaints”, adding that this “has been the procedural behavior” of José Sócrates.
“The complainant/appellant is delaying in a manifestly abusive and blatant manner the passage of the pronouncement and, consequently, his submission to trial. Courts cannot accept the adoption of such procedural behavior”, reads the TRL ruling.
The collective emphasizes that “there is a procedural moment in which the right to disagree with judicial decisions is no longer admissible” and that beyond that moment “disagreement ceases to constitute the exercise of defense rights and starts to constitute a illegitimate exercise of this right”.
“This procedural behavior does not derive from a lack of knowledge or misinterpretation of criminal procedural norms, but constitutes a willful and ‘contra legem’ (against the law) behavior and aims only to artificially delay the final decision”, argue the judges, who cite previous TRL rulings to argue that “it is not procedurally permissible to transform a judicial process, with a final decision, into an endless merry-go-round of requests /decisions/appeals in which, successively, at all levels of judicial decision, successive questions are raised, circularly, without any real basis (…) until, finally, the prescription of criminal proceedings”.
The court insists that the former prime minister’s behavior “is not justifiable” and emphasizes that “the law imposes on the accused the duty to litigate in a fair and equitable manner”, and that he must “accept that the decisions handed down by the courts are show mandatory compliance”.
The TRL also decided, following the rejection of this complaint, “all requests that, as of this date, relate to issues already definitively decided within the scope of this Court’s ruling, from which it is intended to lodge an appeal/clarification/complaint/nullity or related incident, will be processed separately, extracting transfer”.
The collegiate also decided that until all costs and fines outstanding in the process are paid “new procedural initiatives” by José Sócrates “that aim to call into question the final and unappealable decision” of the Lisbon Appeals decision will not be accepted.
Socrates, 10 years old
In the Operation Marquês case, Sócrates was accused by the MP, in 2017, of 31 crimes, namely passive corruption, money laundering, forgery of documents and tax fraud, but in the instructional decision, on April 9, 2021, the judge Ivo Rosa decided to acquit the former governor of 25 of the 31 crimespronouncing him for trial only for three crimes of money laundering and three of forgery.
A subsequent decision by the Lisbon Court of Appeal would give reason to an appeal by the MP, and in January it ordered a total of 22 defendants to go to trial for 118 economic-financial crimes, revoking the instructional decision, which referred to trial only José Sócrates, Carlos Santos Silva, former minister Armando Vara, Ricardo Salgado and Sócrates’ former driver, João Perna.
