Procedure for acceptance of decree (art. 803 bis a – art. 803 bis i LECrim, Spanish Law)
The Procedure for acceptance of decree is another of the special criminal procedures which the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act (in Spanish Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal, henceforth LECrim) contains. Its aim, is to reduce the burden of the administration of justice by shortening the period of investigation of those crimes punished more leniently by the Spanish […]
The Procedure for the Fast Trying of Determined Crimes (art. 795 – art. 803 LECrim, Spanish Law)
Probably all the countries in the world have the same problem, a criminal procedure too fast may diminish the guarantees which protect the accused against an arbitrary justice, and a criminal procedure too slow may spoil the effectiveness of such justice. Therefore, a proper judicial system is always playing with these two sides of the […]
The main differences between the Ordinary and Abbreviated Procedure of the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act
– Introduction:The title embodies a doubt which has haunted me since I know that there exist two different criminal procedures, and when I finished of commenting the articles concerning the Abbreviated Procedure I committed myself to solve this doubt. Doing my undertaking I want to be as objective as possible, I just want to compere […]
Abbreviated Procedure VII. The execution of the sentence (art. 794 LECrim)
“In a state where the law rules, the sentences claim for being fulfilled as an implicit demand a the efficacy of the judicial protection”, this phrase is a fragment of a resolution coming from the Spanish Constitutional Court (in Spanish Tribunal Constitucional, henceforth TC), and I have chosen it, because I think it embodies all […]
The Abbreviated Procedure VI. The Challenge of the Sentence (art. 790 – art. 793 LECrim)
The right to the challenge is a right comprehended inside the fundamental right to effective legal protection of the article 24 of the Spanish Constitution (in Spanish Constitución Española, henceforth CE), but as other fundamental rights of the CE, it is not an absolute right and its exercise must be developed by the law. This […]
The Abbreviated Procedure V. The Oral Trial and the Sentence (art. 785 – art. 789 LECrim, Spanish Law)
The criminal procedure can be divided in accordance with three stages: the preliminary proceedings, where an Examining Magistrate leads an investigation of a crime with the aim of obtaining enough evidences in order to justify the opening of the Oral Trial (art. 299 and art. 777 of the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act, in Spanish Ley […]
The Abbreviated Procedure IV. The preparation of the Oral Trial (art. 780 – art. 784 LECrim, Spanish Law)
What is termed “The preparation of the Oral Trial” by the Spanish Criminal Procedure Act (in Spanish Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal, henceforth LECrim), is known by those who study procedural law as “the intermediate stage”. We can divide a criminal procedure in three stages: the preliminary proceedings, where are gathered the evidences which will determine […]
The Abbreviated Procedure III. The Preliminary Proceedings (Art. 774 – Art. 779 LECrim, Spanish Law)
The preliminary proceedings are the proofs carried out during the stage of investigation of a crime, and which have as aim to find out the commission of a crime, the persons liable of it and to assure the pecuniary liabilities arisen from it, or in short, to prepare the Oral Trial. This definition is valid […]
The Abbreviated Procedure II. The interventions of the Judicial Police and the Public Prosecutor´s Office (art. 769 – art. 773 LECrim, Spanish Law)
After the articles concerned with the General Dispositions, the Spanish Criminal Procedural Law (in Spanish Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal, henceforth LECrim) has a chapter regulating the intervention of the Judicial Police and the Public Prosecutor´s Office. This chapter begins with an article akin to the article 758 that is at the onset of the chapter […]
The Abbreviated Procedure I
General Dispositions (art. 757 – art. 768 LECrim, Spanish Law)
The Abbreviated Procedure was created at the end of the eighties, in order to adapt the Spanish legislation to the European and Spanish jurisprudence. More concretely, the Spanish Constitutional Tribunal´s sentence of July, 12, 1988, established the principle “who conducts the preliminary investigation cannot try”, this supposed the reform of the criminal procedures whose trying […]