José Luis Ábalos wants to be tried by a popular jury instead of by the Supreme Court magistrates. This has been claimed in the high court by the defense of the former minister in a document in which he argues that (bribery, influence peddling and embezzlement) are, according to the law, typical of prosecution by a jury court (made up of lay citizens chosen by lot). The former socialist leader’s lawyer defends that the rule that regulates the functioning of the popular jury establishes that “the main crimes are those within the jurisdiction of the jury, which drag down the others, never the opposite.”
The instructor of the Ábalos case in the Supreme Court, Leopoldo Puente, opened an oral trial on December 11 against the former Minister of Transportation, his former advisor and the commission agent Aldama for the alleged corrupt plot around the purchase of masks during the covid-19 pandemic. But Ábalos’ lawyer demands that the Supreme Court annul that decision and open a jury procedure.
Bautista uses two agreements from the high court from 2010, according to which, although other crimes that are not usually the jurisdiction of a jury court are also tried (in this case, criminal organization and use of privileged information), the jurisdiction of the popular jury will be extended to them as long as they have been committed with the main objective of perpetrating a crime that does correspond to the jury court. And this is what happens, according to the lawyer, in this case.
The crime of criminal organization, Bautista alleges, “was developed for the commission” of embezzlement, bribery and influence peddling, crimes under the jurisdiction of the Jury Court, “the jurisdiction for prosecuting the crime of criminal organization is absorbed by it,” Bautista alleges. Regarding the crime of insider information, the lawyer states: “It is so intertwined in the account of the facts of the accusations with the crimes under the jurisdiction of the jury court, that the continence of the case would be broken if it were tried separately.”
The lawyer defends in his writing that the fact that Ábalos is certified, which is why his case has been investigated and will be tried in the Supreme Court, does not prevent a popular jury from intervening. Bautista maintains that a “normative confluence” occurs. “On the one hand, due to the capacity, the Supreme Court must prosecute; on the other hand, depending on the type of crime, a popular jury must be used. The capacity modifies the judicial body ordinarily, but not the procedure,” says the lawyer.
The law establishes “with crystal clarity”, according to the lawyer, that the jury court will be constituted “in the scope of the Provincial Court or, where appropriate, the courts that correspond due to the capacity of the accused.” “This express mention of the certified courts (Superior Courts of Justice and Supreme Court) dispels any doubt about the legislator’s will for the jury procedure to be applicable to these venues,” he warns.
