SANTO DOMINGO. – Lawyers debated this Wednesday before the press the validity of the 4-year maximum time limit in the criminal proceedings against former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodriguez, which began in 2020, amidst questions regarding responsibility for the delays in the case.
When approached upon leaving the hearing, the jurists referred to Article 148 of the Criminal Procedure Code and the constitutional jurisprudence that establishes 4 years as the maximum time for the Public Prosecutor’s Office to present an indictment.
“It is four years in this case because the rules in force at the time the process began apply, which are the rules of Law 10-15, and therefore that term is four years of constitutional jurisprudence,” explained lawyer Hansel Perdomo to the journalists.
When asked about how many years the process has been going on, he replied: “It has already passed four years”.
However, he warned that the Public Prosecutor’s Office could argue that the delays are the responsibility of the defendant. “That is an interesting discussion, I don’t know the outcome, but the Public Prosecutor’s Office would have to prove it,” he noted.
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The jurist indicated that these proceedings have hearing minutes and decisions that will serve to determine who is responsible for the delay. “If the defense prepared well, which I do not doubt, it will be a heavy and difficult job for the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” he added.
Another lawyer who previously offered statements, Manuel Sierra Pérez, had asserted that the process “is extinct” due to the expiration of the deadline and held the Public Prosecutor’s Office directly responsible for not having presented an accusation in almost 6 years, despite having announced that the case was “armored.”
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As reported, the hearing will resume next Wednesday.
However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office reiterated this Monday that the attempts by Jean Alain Rodríguez Sánchez to evade the responsibility of facing the trial evidence with a repeated request for the dismissal of the criminal action, which has already been ruled against him, are legally inadmissible.
This was stated by court prosecutor Mirna Ortiz, head of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for the Prosecution of Administrative Corruption (Pepca), who considered it impossible for a court to issue a ruling for the extinction of criminal action in this case.
“What is going to happen with this incident? The same thing that has happened with previous proceedings,” he said.
He recalled that the Constitutional Court has established the way in which the time of a proceeding must be calculated. “The deadline for extinction is not a mathematical deadline, it is a deadline that must contemplate the magnitude of the proceeding and the complexity, just as the rule states,” he indicated.
“And it must also address the criteria of reasonable timeframes, which are now addressed in article 146 of the Criminal Procedure Code; therefore, a dismissal ruling can never intervene in this process and they will be compelled to have to hear the trial on the merits,” he stressed.
She said that today the defendant and his lawyers once again wanted to delay the process, intending for the court to extend the two-hour deadline it had granted them for the presentation of their motion. “We spent practically three hours for the court to establish once again that they only had two hours for the presentation of their motion for dismissal,” Ortiz pointed out, when responding to the journalists who approached her in the hallways of the Ciudad Nueva Palace of Justice.
