The investigating judge rejected the appeals of the accusations against the order which refused the opening of an oral trial against Mónica Oltra, former vice-president of the Valencian Government during the Pact of the Botanic stage, according to a resolution of December 18 to which this newspaper had access. This is the replacement of the president of the Instruction Court number 15 of Valencia, who makes the same decision and which coincides with the position of the Prosecutor’s Office in the face of the criteria of the fourth section of the Provincial Court of Valencia, which forced the instructor, Vicente Ríos, to reopen the case, despite the fact that the judge found no evidence against the leader of Compromís.
The judge rejects calls for reform of the two popular accusations that appear in the case: Vox and the Gobierna-te association, of the ultra agitator Cristina Seguí. And he recognizes the “perfectly consistent assessment” of prosecutor Jaime Cussac, who requested the dismissal of the appeals of the two popular accusations.
The report of the representative of the Public Ministry affirms that “none of the accusations specified what these indications were, individualizing them for each factual episode and for each accused (…)”, affirms the prosecutor in a writing to which elDiario.es had access.
“The primary task of the judge in the procedural situation we are considering is to rigorously examine the accusations to prevent a citizen from being accused in court without sufficient grounds,” he adds.
The public prosecutor’s report claims that Vox’s appeal “distorts” the “scope” of the order of the fourth section of the Provincial Court of Valencia, which ordered the investigating judge to “adapt the procedure to the procedures of the abbreviated procedure” and to the subsequent opening, “if necessary” – a detail highlighted by the prosecutor – of the oral trial.
“In no case did superiority advance the decision to open the oral trial,” asserts the representative of the public prosecutor.
“There is therefore, and as the appellant claims, no mandate to open the oral trial which usurps, in anticipation of a certain position, the criteria of the instructor in this regard,” he adds.
The prosecutor recalls that the decision “to open or not an oral trial (…) is undoubtedly the main function of the judicial power in the phase where the case is located”.
The “essential” function of “guaranteeing the rights of citizens”
An “essential” function which also involves “guaranteeing the rights of citizens” and, “especially” of those who are confronted with ““ius puniendi” (the power to sanction illicit attitudes) of the State “even if this can be, in another particularity of our system, mediated by people totally foreign to the question studied”.
The public prosecutor’s report alludes to the “peculiarities” of the “archaic” Spanish procedural system of criminal investigation”, with a “shocking survival” of the investigating judge which “obscures the relevance of the trial with regard to the prosperity of the prosecution since the one who must do it is also the one who directed the investigation with the risk of partiality that such a juxtaposition of functions always entails”.
On the other hand, Vox’s appeal alleged that it was not possible, in the procedural phase during which the case was judged, “to formally adopt the provisional dismissal decision”. However, the prosecutor considers that “in the applicable legal regime, there is no allusion either to the alleged obligation of the instructor to open an oral trial at the request of one or only a few of the charges brought, nor to the prohibition that such a referral could be provisional as that agreed in the contested order”.
Regarding the government’s appeal, the prosecutor limits himself to recalling that the fourth chamber of the Valencia Court “expressly” approved the factual account of the order of the investigating judge, magistrate Vicente Ríos, who ordered the dismissal of the case.
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