Zaragoza, February 10th, 2012
After hearing yesterday the verdict of the Second Room of the High Court about Baltasar Garzon, Judges for Democracy says:
The High Court is the superior court in the legal Systems except the provisions concerning constitutional guarantees, and has condemned the judge Baltasar Garzon for the crime of prevarication to the Article 446.3 ° in apparent overlapping (Article 8.3) with a crime to the Article 536, first paragraph, of the Penal Code and sentenced to financial penalty and eleven years of disqualification from office as a judge or magistrate.
JpD defends the discrepancy and the critique of the judicial resolutions, because this task, exerted from the intellectual honesty, contributes to the formation of public opinion, essential in a model of democratic coexistence. As we said before, analysis should be done from the arguments in the sentence and with respect for the judiciary, does not deny the criticism but excludes personal attacks or derogatory to the Court or the people that integrate it.
The interpretation of the crime judicial prevarication (willfully to make an unfair decision) is always extremely delicate, because an inadequate understanding of it can affect judicial independence. At the High Court and any criminal court when prosecute, only be asked to apply the law and respect the presumption of innocence. This must be either in determining the facts and the interpretation made of the legal regulations. Sharing or not the decision and the interpretation on which it is founded, we must state that the Supreme Court has ruled in this context and should not be disqualified as such an institution for it. This, moreover, without prejudice to its case can then say the Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights.
Moreover, the substantive fundamental rights are essential elements of community management objective established in rule of law. These rights underlie our lives together and have a procedural dimension that affects all legal proceedings in a democratic system. No legal proceedings may be regarded as constitutionally legitimate if its development does not respect these rights or if the breach affects in its conclusions. It requires a clear regulation of the legal capacity that hold the judiciary in criminal proceedings, therefore, we should not forget the blatant inaction of the Parliament in the poor regulation exists in our criminal procedure on deferring interference with fundamental rights, postponing approve the necessary changes in the Criminal Procedure Act.
Finally, corruption is a social, political and economic complex that affects all aspects of society, it causes a serious injury and which may affect the political structure that allows our society. It is imperative that all public authorities to assume their responsibility, not confined to derive the same only the unlikely event that criminal liability can be established, and also established the necessary mechanisms for their persecution by the enormous difficulties they face though it may be related to the very political power. Political responsibility can’t be reduced to the case of existence of criminal liability judicially declared.
Zaragoza, February 10th, 2012