By unanimous decision, the Budget Commission integrated with the Treasury left out of the Accountability project nine articles that sought to give more powers to the victims within the criminal process. This generated surprise in the judicial environment, since these changes had been formulated by the Inter-institutional Coordinating Office for Victims and Witnesses of Crimes, chaired by the Prosecutor’s Office and in which several government agencies participate.
The text had received the approval of all the members of the cabinet, including the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning, the Ministry of Public Health, INAU, ASSE, BPS, the Public Defender of the Judiciary, the National Human Rights Institution, Association of Relatives and Victims of Crime (Asfavide) as a representative of civil society.
as he knew The Observer, in Parliament there was consensus for the issue to be studied by a specialized commission on the subject. However, this implies at least a delay compared to what was planned if approved within the Rendering of Accounts. To begin with, it will be necessary for some legislator to take the project as his own and formally present it for parliamentary processing.
The legislators excused themselves from dealing with it based on article 216 of the Constitution, which establishes that no article dealt with within the budget and/or accountability law can exceed the period of government, although that is something that is done frequently.
Juan Raúl Williman, professor in charge of the Criminal Legal Office for Assistance to Victims of the Law School in the agreement with Asfavide, lamented, in dialogue with The Observer, that the proposal that had come out of the cabinet with unanimous support has not been endorsed in Parliament. “It was a good opportunity not to leave legal loopholes and not let some courts decide one thing and others another. There you lose legal certainty. We lost the possibility of gaining legal certainty and, on the other hand, assuring the victim of her right to participate in the process. Not to participate as if it were a vase, an active participation, to help with the prosecution, “he said.
To which he added: “There is a design error, which generically regulates a lot of rights and specifically does not do so well. Regulating generically is the same as not regulating, if it is not for the gallery“.
The articles and a controversy
The project made seven modifications, among which Williman highlights the one that allowed the victim to join the judicial process at any stage, as well as the one that assigned children a defender in case of conflict of interest. “We had people who were at the wake of his relative and who had the formalization hearing. Obviously he was not going to be able to be on both sides. That is why it was important to have the article that would allow him to join later,” he valued.
Another of the articles, however, had generated controversy among judicial operators, who warned that it could bring a barrage of requests for unconstitutionality. It was a provision that allowed the victim to present evidence at the accusation control hearing –instance in which it is debated what part of all the evidence presented by the prosecution and the defendant’s defense will be treated in court–.
In this way, if this modification is successful, the victim could bring evidence to trial without giving the prosecution or the defense the opportunity to answer, while the victim would be in a position to answer all the evidence presented by the other parties.
Williman assured that this already happens by way of facts, but even so, he recognized that it would be important for the victim to answer within the same timeframes as the prosecution and the defense so that the process would be “more guaranteed.” The lawyer stated that he was waiting to be summoned to a committee in Parliament to make this digression.
