The judge Manuel Marchena, President of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, criticized the “historic break” that the project represents for the Prosecutor’s Office assume the “criminal investigation, instead of the investigating judge. Marchena assured, during his speech at the Ideal forum under the title Challenges and challenges of the Spanish criminal procedure, this Thursday, that reform is an “unstoppable trend”, but that “it cannot be achieved in a time like the one we live in”.
Marchena, known for his role in the trials of process Catalan, focused on “the speed” with which criminal law evolves and set out, as an example, Artificial Intelligence Act“who has not considered debates” on how to preserve intellectual property when it is delegated to algorithms. Regarding solutions to problems in the criminal field, the judge said that in Spain “there is a blind trust in regulatory solutions“Laws only offer a legal response to social problems, but I am convinced that the progress of an institution never depends on the legal framework in which the work is carried out, but on the personal attitude with which something is assumed,” he said. Marchena pointed out.
“This is often what fails, we are going to reform, The reform is over and the problem persists because personal attitude and commitment to constitutional values are what defines the development of an institution,” the judge assured. “Today, the Attorney General of the State has demanded a comprehensive reform of the criminal procedure,” said Marchena, who acknowledged that Spain “It is the only country in Europe in which the investigating judge investigates, in all European countries the public prosecutor investigates,” he said, referring on the other hand to the “nuance” of the French case.
However, Marchena said that “any reform that meets the Ministry of Finance “To assimilate it to what exists in Europe would be interpreted as a strategy aimed at having greater control over the courts.” The words of Marchena they arrive after Alvaro Garcia, State Attorney General, defended the urgency of reforming the system Criminal Procedure Law for the Prosecutor’s Office to take charge of the investigation. The judge also said that we were moving towards “a trivialization of the legal debate.” “Of course, you can give your opinion on the sentence,” he said, but rejected comments that were not “legally correct.”
