Derogatory nicknames (“frigid”, “troll”, “boring housewife”), public humiliations (“she has no idea how to process”, “I laugh at her with my judge friends” and “she’s not even good for cleaning the shit out of my ass) or comments of a sexual nature (“she has a good fuck”) are some of the situations that the officials of a court in Nules (Castellón) had to endure from Judge Vanesa Pérez Lleó, head of the Court of First Instance 4 of that town between October 2020 and November 2022. The Supreme Court has confirmed a penalty of 2,000 euros imposed on Pérez Lleó as the author of a serious disciplinary offense of inconsideration. The Supreme Court rejects all the arguments that the judge had defended to appeal the fine, such as that the expressions for which she was punished were framed in conversations in a “relaxed and non-formal” tone.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, for which the former president of the Council and of the high court was the speaker, details what the court officials defined as a “situation of unbearable labor conflict” due to the “unacceptable attitude” and “enduring over time” of the head of the court. They did so in a letter sent to the senior judge of Nules and which he sent to the president of the Superior Court of Justice of the Community of Valencia, who was the one who elevated the case to the CGPJ. The text included episodes in which the judge described some of the officials as “lazy” and warned them that “heads would roll.” In addition, he publicly humiliated the lawyer of the Administration of Justice. He even overtook a detainee, who had exercised his right not to declare his wish to be sentenced.
The officials also included humiliations by the judge to a local prosecutor, to whom she directed expressions such as “go fuck yourself” or “I can’t handle you, I can’t stand you, I’m going to put a shit in you and I’m going to take your head off.” According to the complaint, the prosecutor requested the transfer to another judicial district due to the “harassment” suffered by the judge. The letter also reported that the magistrate “frequently” appeared late, up to four hours late, to court appointments without offering explanations; and went so far as to call the dean an “asshole” before several members of the judicial office.
It was the dean who notified the Valencian TSJ, which elevated the case to the disciplinary authority of the CGPJ. Although at first it closed the case, the Council ordered it to be reopened and, in the end, determined that the facts were a serious disciplinary offense of inconsideration, as established in article 418.5 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ). This provision sanctions “excess or abuse of authority, or serious lack of consideration towards citizens, institutions, secretaries, forensic doctors or other personnel at the service of the Administration of Justice, members of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, lawyers and solicitors, social graduates and officials of the Judicial Police.”
The judge – who is from Tenerife, with jurisdiction over violence against women – defended in her appeal that the Council did not provide sufficient reasons for the sanction, but the Supreme Court rejects this argument. “To consider the offense committed, it is not necessary that the words used be accompanied by an offensive animus,” states the Contentious Chamber, which rejects that the expressions used by the judge are protected by freedom of expression. To assess the facts, the court notes, it has taken into account “the context in which those words were used, after examining all the testimonies collected” and without admitting the judge’s argument that she uttered those statements in “an atmosphere of closeness and cordiality.” The Supreme Court says that “this supposed relaxed and non-formal tone would not justify the judge’s use of certain terms or expressions, raising her voice or making criticisms that disparage the person receiving them, an assessment that this Chamber fully shares.”
