The court which judged those responsible for process independence once again ignored the prosecution and refused to apply the amnesty law to the crime of embezzlement, for which, among other Catalan leaders, the former vice-president of the Generalitat was convicted. Oriol Junqueras.
This is what the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court affirmed in an order dated this Monday. The magistrate Ana FerrerHowever, he cast a dissenting vote showing his disagreement with this decision and considering that the controversial amnesty law should apply to this crime.
The rest of the members of the Criminal Chamber, on the other hand, consider that the embezzlement committed by those responsible for the affair processhaving obtained with him a “personal advantage of a financial nature”, must be excluded from the application of the rule. The law, in its article 2, includes a list of exceptions to its application, among which this situation is included.
The Supreme Court had already ruled in this direction, but the public prosecutor, the prosecution and the defense of several convicts —Dolors Bassa, Jordi Turull And Raul Romevain addition to Junqueras— They filed two appeals, which were not heard by the court that tried them.
Indeed, in its order, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court underlines that responding to the request of the defense of the condemned, who alluded, “without any other reference, to the will of the legislator”, would mean “abdicating our role as as judges.”
The court insists that said “political will” must be consistent with “the normative statements” that include it. Between the two elements, “a logical and coherent link is essential and complies with the elementary requirements of legal technique”.
“Laws cannot be interpreted as a verbal mandate addressed by political power to judges. Legal texts, like written texts, contain a mandate which is inserted in their own letter”, underlines the second chamber of the Supreme Court.
“From the will of the legislator, all that remains is the language and legal concepts through which he wanted to concretize his purpose. Consequently, the rule of law can only be guaranteed once the published legal text is subject to a verified judicial interpretation in accordance with the hermeneutical guidelines which define the canon of rationality imposed by the constitutional duty of motivation”, add the magistrates.
On the other hand, Judge Ana Ferrer issued another unique dissenting opinion, very similar in its arguments to the one she signed in the order that refused the application of amnesty to the crime of embezzlement and which ended up being the subject of an appeal. by Bassa, Junqueras and Turull.
According to him, the reading of the controversial law underlines “the unequivocal legislative objective of amnesty from the allocation of public funds to the celebration of the referendums that took place in Catalonia in the years 2014 and 2017 and, in general, of all expenses incurred. by the public treasury each time they sought to make (…) the process of Catalan independence a reality”.
This is why we consider it a “legal fiction” to consider, like the rest of the House, that the use of public funds to carry out the process This meant an incorporation of these funds into the assets of the convicted person, thus giving rise to a personal financial advantage. “It’s an entelechy. And it’s because this incorporation did not really take place,” maintains the magistrate.
“There was no incorporation into their respective assets, nor, consequently, any movable advantage. We cannot appreciate any other personal benefit than that of satisfying an illegal political project.. And this is precisely this, not only the will of the legislator (…) but also that which emerges from the least convoluted interpretation (…) and, in my opinion, the most reasonable [de la Ley de Amnistía]he proclaims,” concludes his private vote.
