"It happened to us": legislators presented a project that removes increased penalties from Accountability, but not zoom hearings

This project was presented by 11 deputies and the Chamber of Deputies referred the matter to be dealt with in that commission. Now, the deputies must agree, when the Surrender is dealt with in plenary, that these articles are effectively removed from the final project.

Zoom inmate hearings?

Another of the articles that was criticized by the three associations was 130, which establishes that some hearings where prisoners participate are via Zoom. However, this article was not included in the bill to be discussed. Because? “It happened to us”sentenced the representative of the Independent Party, Iván Posada to The Observer.

Posada pointed out that this article was not together with the other articles that make penal modifications, so they did not realize that it was included. Anyway, he pointed out, for him, that article “violates the guarantees and should be discussed in the Accountability.

This project was communicated to representatives of the Association of Public Defenders of Uruguay, the Association of Magistrates of Uruguay (AMU) and the Association of Fiscal Magistrates of Uruguay (AMFU), when they appeared this Friday at the Budget subcommittee integrated with the Treasury that receives delegations within the framework of the treatment of Accountability.

The first to communicate to appear and discuss these issues were the public defenders who raised their disagreement with the increase in penalties for homicides. “If we are saying that today we cannot with what we have, if all the homicides are processed by oral trial, plain and simple, those people are going to be defenseless. We will not be able to cover the needs of the service with the charges we currently have“, said the representative of public defenders, Lucía Long, according to the shorthand version.

Faced with these claims, the nationalist deputy Gonzalo Mujica was the one who informed them that there was a project presented. “I wanted to report that it is likely that the Articles referring to the modifications that you mentioned come out of the Accountability“, he assured in commission.

For their part, the next to mention the disagreement were the judges. “This is going to cause problems. work overload; It is a figure that will no longer be able to abbreviate. Although statistically we know that the majority of homicides are not simple, in turn, in the context of concern about security that is taking place, precisely, simple homicide is not the one that keeps us all awake, the one that generates the covers of newspapers and the first covers of the news. ANDhomicide, today, cannot be abbreviated because they are aggravated homicides or very especially aggravated. I do not understand much“, said the representative of AMU, Leonardo Mendez.

Given this, the one who responded was Posada. “It seems to us that, first of all, this is not a commission specialized in these issues and it seems clear that they should listen to the corresponding advice before proceeding to changes in criminal law and in the hearing process for misdemeanors. That was already separated in a independent project“, he clarified.

Finally, the prosecutors appeared before the commission and also raised their doubts regarding those articles. “This projection has a very important practical impact on the dynamics of the prosecutor’s offices and in practice not only seen from the point of view of the prosecutor’s offices but from the point of view of the State responding when andThere is a situation like this, that is, a crime of homicide that must be investigated, prosecuted and seek the conviction of the person who committed it“, said the president of the Association of Prosecutors, Willian Rosa.

In turn, Rosa also criticized that these changes that are of criminal matters are going to be carried out in a law that is of a budgetary nature.

After his request, Posada reiterated that this article was separated to be dealt with in a separate bill.