The Criminal Cassation Court has ordered the revival of all federal cases where there are arrests including corruption, crimes against humanity, slavery and drug-trafficking.
While no complete list was presented with the resolution, it is known to cover cases such as the Kirchnerite tycoon Lázaro Báez, for example.
The Perfil newspaper asked one of the courts judges if that meant oral trials would be revived, despite the coronavirus pandemic.
"All cases, including those. If a cashier in a supermarket can attend [to customers], how come a judge won’t be able to work?" was the reply, according to the newspaper.
The Cassation Court has requested the digital means necessary to carry through every kind of procedure in these cases. Until now, orders within the extraordinary court holiday were to give priority to the cases in which the liberty of those detained was at stake in order to ease the strain on prisons during the coronavirus pandemic, but now the Cassation Court has requested that all technological elements be extended to all cases with prisoners and not just placed at the disposal of risk patients.
The decision came hours after the Supreme Court officially extended the "extraordinary court holiday" until May 10, in line with the national government.
According to the ruling, "the jurisdictional organs are in a fit condition to begin undertaking greater activity at both the administrative and jurisdictional levels in order to avoid the paralysis of cases and to prevent delays which might irreversibly affect the rights of the parties."
It continues: "In accordance with the guidelines provided in the previous point, the tribunals under the Superintendency of this appeals court should advance in the various procedural stages, always provided that the parties can have digital access to the information in the case to make their presentations, preceded by the hearings provided by the procedural norms being held virtually (always assuming that the technological means permit this) when there is no reasonably grounded opposition."
– TIMES/PERFIL, adapted from reporting by Mariano Confalonieri.
Comments