The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice maintains the criterion that the decisions that declare the extinction of the criminal action, based on the prescription, the abandonment of the accusation, among other causes of similar consequence, must be understood as susceptible to being appealed, as established in articles 416 and following of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The jurisprudential criterion is contained in judgment no. SCJ-SS-22-0527, dated May 31, 2022, in which it states that the American Convention on Human Rights establishes in its article 8, numeral 2, letter h, that during the process every person has lawin full equality, to appeal the ruling before a judge or higher court.
It also highlights that, in accordance with the provisions of article 74 of the Constitution of the Republic, Fundamental rights and guarantees are not limitingTherefore, the treaties, pacts and conventions related to human rights, signed and ratified by the Dominican State, have constitutional hierarchy and are directly and immediately applied by the courts and other State bodies.
“It has been a criterion assumed by this Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, in the sense that our procedural design promotes the right to appeal, which is a primary guarantee that must be respected within the framework of due process, for the sake of allow a judgment considered detrimental to the appellant to be reviewed by a different and higher-ranking judge. The power to challenge a decision before a different instance, in order to attack the bases and content of the sentence, is undoubtedly a fundamental manifestation of a Rule of Law”indicates the Second Room.
“Although the States have a margin of appreciation to regulate the exercise of this resource, they cannot establish restrictions or requirements that violate the very essence of the law. law to appeal the ruling,” he adds.
The sentence, signed by the judges Francisco Antonio Jerez Mena (who presides), Fran Euclides Soto Sánchez and María G. Garabito Ramírez, declares the appeal filed against criminal resolution no. 502-01-2021-SRES-00125issued by the Third Chamber of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal of the National District, on April 28, 2021.
Likewise, the contested resolution is approved and the process is sent before the Presidency of the Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals of the National District, in order that it seize one of its Chambers, different from the one of origin, so that it can carry out a new evaluation. of the merits of the appeal.
