Judges and prosecutors are demanding the repeal of the maximum deadline for investigating criminal cases

The four associations of judges and three prosecutors have claimed this Friday letter to the president of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, repeal, through a royal decree law, article 324 of the Criminal procedure Act, which limited to a period of six months the investigation of criminal cases, and 18 months, extendable to 18, those declared causes complex. The next December 6, overcomes the maximum term of 36 months for the statement of these causes, which include offences of organized crime, terrorism and cases with a large number of investigated or victims or that involve a lot of documentation or performances abroad. The statement underscores the need to repeal this article "to avoid impunity, without doubt, will cause the file of the listed causes".

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The law does not specify whether the declared causes are complex and can only be extended for a single term of 18 months, in addition to the 18 above or if you can chain more extensions to the instruction. This has left the door open for the Provincial courts have gone to what legal sources referred to as “creative interpretations” of the rule and have agreed extensions to extraordinary of the period of instruction.

on Thursday, Betmoon the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF), the association to which he belonged, the minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, before entering the Government last June, asked the four major parties to urge the Government to repeal decree law, that is, by an emergency procedure, article 324 of the criminal procedure law. There is an "urgent need to avoid the risk of impunity" that this provision "implies", said the UPF in his writings to the parties.

At the end of 2017, the parliamentary group We introduced in Congress a proposition of law with a single point: "Is hereby repealed, article 324 of the Criminal procedure Act". This initiative, however, has been blocked in the Congress after the PP has requested up to 55 times the extension of the deadline for amendments to the text. On 2 September, the president of the PP, Paul Married, and the former minister of Justice Rafael Catalá met with the associations of judges and prosecutors and they pledged their support for the repeal of article 324. However, since then, there have been no less than 15 extensions of the term of amendments to the text presented makes almost Can almost a year ago.

The partnerships also take advantage of your letter to claim for a reform of the Organic Law of the Judicial Power set that are the judges and the judges who choose the majority of the members of the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), the twelve of removing judicial. The PP proposed this reform after breaking the political agreement reached with the Government to renew the current CGPJ, but the government has defended the current system, in which all of the members are elected —directly or indirectly— by the Parliament.