The parliament confirmed this Friday the modification of the law that provided for an extension of the situations of impediment of the judges, included in the anti-corruption strategy and in the reforms to the Code of Criminal Procedure approved at the end of the previous legislature.
The final text presented by the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Freedoms and Guarantees was submitted to a global final vote in the plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic, where it received the votes in favor of PS, PSD, Chega, Liberal Initiative (IL) and PAN and it had the abstentions of PCP, Bloco de Esquerda (BE) and Livre.
The approval of the text referring to article 40 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPP) establishes the limitation of the acts that generated situations of impediment to the judges, after the criticisms made by the judiciary in recent months, defending now that no judge can intervene in a trial, appeal or request for review in relation to a case in which he has “applied a coercive measure” and “presided over an instructive debate”.
It was about the impossibility for a judge to participate in a certain stage of the criminal process, for having carried out acts in previous moments of the same process, that is, a judge who had carried out an act in the investigation stage was automatically prevented from carrying out acts in subsequent phases of the process, either the investigation or the trial.
For the review of this law, the first parliamentary commission also requested the opinions of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, the Superior Council of the Public Ministry and the Bar Association. The discussion and voting of the specialty took place this Wednesday, after being approved in general on June 3.
The change in legislation was announced at the Council of Ministers on April 12. The Minister of Justice, Catarina Sarmento e Castro, presented on June 1 the bill that modifies the CPP (and the 2002 law to combat organized and economic-financial crime), appealing to the deputies to accelerate the regime change . approved in the previous legislature.
The deputies also approved the final text of the same commission on the Government’s proposal for a law that transposes the European directive on the exchange of information on third-country nationals and the European information system on criminal records. The document received favorable votes from PS, PSD, IL and PAN, abstentions from Chega and Livre and votes against from PCP and BE.
Source: Observadora
