The State Public Prosecutor’s Office has requested the Constitutional Court to exclude conservative magistrate José María Macías from the deliberations related to the amnesty law, which he publicly opposed last year, according to the letter advanced by Cadena Ser and to which elDiario.es has had access. The document considers that Macías is not impartial to participate in these decisions. The reason for the recusal focuses on the report he signed in March 2024, when he was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), and which considered that the law of criminal forgetting of the trial was unconstitutional.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the “conclusions” of this report prove that Macías, the last magistrate to join the plenary session at the initiative of the PP, had “in-depth knowledge” of the dispute when he was a civil servant and constituted a “criterion” with the rest of the members who then made up the governing body of judges “to the detriment of fair impartiality.”
The Public Ministry presented this challenge against Macías in the first case related to the amnesty that it had to study: the question of unconstitutionality presented by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court. Their arguments, however, are applicable to the 20 challenges that have been presented against the rule, among them by the PP itself, an appeal of which Macías is the speaker.
During his time as a member of the CGPJ, Macías led a group of members who actively opposed, among other government measures, this amnesty law, forcing the publication of a contrary report that had not been requested of them at first.
The challenge of the prosecution joins that presented last week by the prosecution. The Public Prosecutor’s Office also considers that he cannot be the rapporteur of the appeal of the Popular Party because, during his period as a member of the CGPJ, he had “direct participation” in the “official actions” of the Council against the amnesty, such as the aforementioned report, which represents for the prosecution “a thorough, motivated, reiterated, detailed and categorical assessment” of the law.
