The recent actions of Chamber II of the Supreme Court investigating the state Attorney General and the manner in which this matter is being handled perplexes us, as ordinary citizens, as jurists who have long served as public officials of the state. and as democrats aware of the importance of having a strong and respectable rule of law that guarantees the rights of citizens as well as the strength and integrity of the institutions that compose it.
Citizens sometimes do not understand the way justice is administered. The opacity and the rituals in which it is deployed contribute to this. Nor is it possible to understand that, sometimes, the most important organs of the judiciary and its government become political actors, to the point of calling into question the application of the norms approved by Parliament. Or, legal proceedings motivated by supposedly popular accusations are used to act with influence in the political and social framework.
This is the case in which an investigation is opened against the Attorney General of the State with the alleged pretext of a procedural leak of unknown origin which, moreover, it is possible to think that it could have been due to several participants in this process. , with the serious risk of delegitimizing an essential figure of the democratic system, and thus allowing doubts about the rectitude of a fundamental constitutional institution of the rule of law, since it is responsible, within the framework of justice, for defending the public interest and the promotion of the social interest before the courts. Perhaps because there are other interests that oppose the defense of the public and social interests that this Attorney General is currently defending. Other interests that correspond to the reactionary sectors of our society, also anchored in public institutions, as is the case in the most conservative and corporate sectors of justice and the prosecution, which have even led to an association of these last, to exercise an action. “popular” in this same process.
And it is in this investigative process, where it seems incomprehensible, that the controversial motivation for inequality with other possible parties involved in the same leak in question is found, as well as with the actions carried out in frequent cases of reported violations of courtroom secrecy. in deliberations or in constitutional bodies, the diligence agreed by the instructor of entering the Attorney General’s office to seize all information contained in computer devices and media, to which the Code of Criminal Procedure is extremely careful , requiring in its article 588. bis a) that said investigative actions on the registration of mass information storage devices must be carried out with “total submission to the principles of specialty, aptitude, exception, necessity and proportionality of the measure” In this case, neither the exceptional nature, nor the necessity, nor the proportionality of the measure seem to find their reason for being as a first investigative action, and particularly when it is directed against people who occupy positions relevant institutional authorities, even knowing the reasonable existence of other possible authors. What could have happened to act like this outside of common reason, legal reason and democratic reason?
The truth is that even those of us who are experts in the judicial world cannot understand this action, in which the procedure is so insensitive due to the seriousness of what is being promoted, which is extremely disproportionate given that the charge is for a lesser amount. serious crime of art 497 CP and that the immediate consequence is to cause serious damage to the prestige of institutions, and therefore to our rule of law and our democracy, through the Attorney General of the State, elsewhere, and not the government, place under suspicion the actions of the entire public prosecutor’s office and its constitutional functions, including that of ensuring that the jurisdictional function is exercised effectively in accordance with the laws.
This is why we believe that a thorough reflection is necessary on our current system of criminal investigation and its adaptation to the models of the countries around us, as well as on the participation in popular accusations which are not always motivated by public interest. justice. And of course, the consideration that the proper functioning of constitutional institutions and their control mechanisms constitutes the basis of a just and democratic society.
