Can there be a criminal conviction if there is no direct evidence?
Well yes. In fact you could, But now, at last, concrete parameters have been set.
Important, Illustrative and meritorious sentence issued by the Supreme Court in relation to the necessary and due argumentative construction around a probative basis only indicated.
With it, Our high court unifies criteria and provides certainty and security to legal operators when prosecutors whose probative collection is only indicated.
It is a resolution that will now meet a year, We talk about the sentence 532/2019 of 4 November of 2019, being speaker the magistrate D. Vicente Magro Servet.
In the case of cars, the conviction imposed by the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia is confirmed, in which the appeal resources filed by those convicted against sentence of date were dismissed 18 October 2018 From the magistrate-president of the Jury Court of the Provincial Court of A Coruña, in which two people were sentenced to the sentences of 19 y 18 years in prison for consummate of murder.
The criteria to be valued are the following:
1.- Signs cannot be confused with suspicions. To condemn, They must attend proven signs and with mere "probabilities" that the event has occurred.
2.- The judge or court It cannot and should not base the ruling of the sentence in its simple and pure subjective conviction.
3.- The conviction cannot be based on the judge's belief, Court or jury that they "believe" that the events occurred as they report, but "they are convinced" that they occurred like this.
4.- A Adequate motivation about the concurrence of the indications and their "probative relevance".
5.-Elements and requirements in the indiciaria test:
Elements:
1)A base statement or indication. The appointment or mention of what is the fact.
2) A consequence statement. The reference in the judgment of what is deduced from it.
3) A logical and rational link between the first and second of the elements that leads to the condemnation for the sum of the plural indications.
Requirements:
1) That there is one plurality of indications. It cannot be specified, in advance and in abstract, Your number.
2) That this plurality of indications are demonstrated by direct evidence.
3) Indispensable, Between the demonstrated or indication fact and the one that is to deduce there is a precise link, concrete and direct According to human criteria rules.
4) That the judicial body motivate in his judgment the reasoning of how he has reached the certainty of the alleged event.
6.-The Requirement of motivation in the sentence regarding the concurrence of indications and its consequence is stronger And it must be more precise than in direct test cases, since it is clear and diaphanous, But they are not the indications, Because if they were, it would be direct and not indicated proof.
7.- The indications feed together to configure the conviction. In other words, It is about “Inductive reasoning of the indication test”.
8.- If the court does not meet the constitutional duty of motivation, it is impossible to have access to the inference process carried out, And therefore it is impossible to know if the reasoning is “arbitrary, absurd or irrational ".
9.- The key to the indication proof theory or indirect proof lies in the logical and rational link between the base or the base statement and the consequence consequence.
10.- When the Court "adds" the indications in its final process after the trial you get to talk about a, so -called, «subjective certainty», which leads to «Judicial conviction».
11.- The authorship that determines a conviction is not "the best possible explanation to what happened". It is not a sentence of "suspicions", but of convictions that the sum of indications determines and leads to the Court to end up with certainty that the crime was committed by the accused.
12.- It is, after all, from the finding of some mediated facts to conclude other immediate.
13.- He Deductive process that the Court must be carried out must be embodied in its entirety, thus allowing a control of the rationality of the discursive thread through which the court affirms its inference. The inference judgment must be exposed as an intellectual activity that serves as a link to an accredited fact and its logical consequence.
14.- Induction or inference is necessary to be reasonable.
15.- The indications must maintain a correlation in such a way that they form a chain that shares the iter To get to the mental process of conviction that is formed by the sum of the data and the test of each of them.
16.- Both the Supreme Court Chamber as the Constitutional Court can and must control the reasonableness of the discourse explained by the court that issued the conviction based on the evidence of indications or indirect evidence.
17.- Constitutionality control of the rationality and solidity of the inference that the indiciarium evidence is supported can be carried out.
18.- It can be spoken, So, of Two types of irrationality different that deserve separate treatment.
a.- The lack of logic and the concurrence of arbitrariness or absurd.
b.- The lack of conclusion.
It should only be estimated that the guarantee of the presumption of innocence must be considered as violated only “When the inference is illogical or so open that in its bosom it fits such a plurality of alternative conclusions that none of them can occur”.
19.- The conclusion of a presumptive inference should be considered closed, strong and determined.
20.- So that the accusatory thesis can prosper, achieving the enervation of the presumption of innocence, a "Prevailing probability" with respect to those other explanatory hypotheses of the same indications, Among which you can count the factual discharge thesis.
With the aforementioned judgment we are given certainty and legal certainty to face with greater guarantees the right of defense and the strategy in trial for the legitimate interests of our clients, whether we exercise the particular accusation and if we defend the accused.
If you have a legal problem in criminal law, Do not hesitate to contact the office and hire our legal services because the important thing is to feel calm.
