Santo Domingo.- The lawyer and specialist in Constitutional Law, Rahonel Rodríguez Beato, addressed the relevance of the constitutionalization of the duration of the criminal process in the Dominican Republic, highlighting that the justice system must guarantee respect for the reasonable time as an essential part of due process.
Rodríguez Beato explained that the Dominican criminal process finds its basis in the Constitution of the Republic, which establishes that all persons and bodies that exercise public powers are subject to the supreme norm. In that sense, he pointed out that any law, decree, resolution or act that contradicts the constitutional text is null and void.
He indicated that in criminal matters, the courts of the judicial order are responsible for administering justice in conflicts between people, judging and enforcing judgments, always under the framework of constitutional guarantees.
The jurist recalled that every person subjected to a criminal process has the right to a public, oral, and adversarial trial, in full equality and with respect for the right to defense, as well as to be heard within a reasonable time by a competent, independent, and impartial jurisdiction, previously established by law.
From a regulatory point of view, he highlighted the importance of Law No. 97-25, dated December 8, 2025, which institutes the new Dominican Criminal Procedure Code, which regulates the different procedural activities through progressively differentiated stages, chronologically separated, but interrelated with each other.
In that same order, he cited the recent ruling TC/1296/25 of the
Constitutional Court, which establishes that the legislator has set legal deadlines for the performance of procedural acts and for the total duration of certain processes, especially in criminal matters, due to the implications they have on personal freedom and security.
He explained that when the legislator establishes a specific deadline, this should be understood as the reasonable deadline applicable to the case, to which the judge must adhere, except in exceptional situations that justify duly motivated delays.
The specialist pointed out that the Criminal Procedure Code contemplates five phases: investigative or preparatory, preliminary, trial, appeal, and execution of the sentence, all aimed at determining by judicial sentence whether the conduct judged should be sanctioned and, if so, with what penalty according to the current law.
Furthermore, he specified that the regulations set a maximum duration of four years for criminal proceedings, extending to five years when the case is declared complex. However, he indicated that the Supreme Court of Justice has established that these terms constitute reasonable parameters to avoid the indefinite prolongation of the proceedings, but should not be interpreted as a strictly mathematical rule, but rather as a limit that must be analyzed according to the particularities of each case.
Rodríguez Beato emphasized that constitutional jurisprudence has determined three fundamental elements to assess the reasonableness of the duration of a process: the complexity of the matter, the procedural activity of the interested party, and the conduct of the judicial authorities. Consequently, not every process that exceeds the maximum legal term implies a violation of the right to a reasonable time, but only those in which undue delay is evident.
The jurist concluded that the administration of justice must act without undue delay, guaranteeing the effective fulfillment of due process in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.
