He has unanimously declared that those under investigation who are sent to provisional detention in a case declared secret have the right to know the specific content of the evidence that supports their admission to prison. In the covered case, a civil guard was imprisoned for allegedly collaborating with a gang that introduced hashish into Spain, but the investigating court limited itself to informing him that it was based on “captured and recorded conversations” and “other technological research procedures, and limitations of fundamental rights”, without specifying anything else. The guarantee body protects the appellant because he was not informed “what conversations they were about, from what terminals they were made and with what people,” according to the ruling known this Friday.
The Constitutional Court has clarified its own doctrine in view of the fact that some courts are misinterpreting it. Said doctrine has been specifying “what were the evidence of which the investigated party must be informed”, . However, some criminal courts have understood—erroneously—that only the type or class of evidence must be indicated in a generic manner, but not its actual content. In this case, both the Central Court of Investigation and the Appeals Chamber of the National Court had incurred this erroneous interpretation.
The person under investigation, a civil guard, was provisionally imprisoned a year ago. Although his defense requested access to the recordings, this request was denied because the investigating judge considered that the information provided was “sufficient.” The Constitutional Court, , recalls that when it established its doctrine on the possible sources of evidence that should be made available to those sent to prison, it was “evident” that “it was not limiting itself to demanding that the person be informed only of the ‘kind’ or ‘nature’ of the sources of evidence that relate him to the facts, but that this necessarily implies individualizing the content.”
The protected civil guard has now been in provisional prison for ten months, until December 19, 2025, and during all that time he has also been deprived of the right of access to the alleged evidence that exists against him. The Constitutional Court explains, on the contrary, that “the guarantee of access to the essential elements of the investigation must be maintained during the entire time that the person under investigation is deprived of liberty.” And that in any case it is up to the judicial body, in a motivated manner, to decide which evidence may not be “essential” to the right of defense of the person under investigation and may, therefore, be excluded from access, in order not to hinder the ongoing investigation.
“The mere reference to the existence of telephone conversations, which in the opinion of the Court, makes any defense impossible,” the civil guard’s lawyer had denounced at the time before the National Court. The Constitutional Court now considers his appeal for protection by verifying that the document at the time delivered to the appellant, although it included the classification of the crimes for which he was being investigated and the facts for which he was accused, did not provide any information about the recordings that allegedly incriminated him. That is, it said nothing about “what conversations they were about, from what terminals they were made and with what people.”
