Today, the Colombian Attorney General, Luis Eduardo Montealegre Lynett introduced the following bills to the House of Representatives:
1.Statutory bill through which the structure and functioning of the National Chamber for Cassation in Criminal Matters (Sala de Casación Penal de la Corte Suprema de Justicia) is modified. This project is an important progress in the protection of fundamental rights and the strengthening of the penal guarantees. The reform proposes to create two Trial Courts and two Examining Magistrates (Jueces de Instruccción) for the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court who will have to investigate and prosecute those cases conducted by the Supreme Court against Congressmen and people who have constitutional privileges.
The reform of the Supreme Court Criminal Chamber plans to incorporate significant legal tools to ensure equal law enforcement and protection of fundamental rights and criminal guaranties through the creation of a concept to occasionally review decisions, and also through the possibility of pronouncing interpretative and unification sentences and the possibility to make a decision based on equity criteria, allowing to materialize justice in individual cases.
Concerning this bill, the Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre Lynnet said “not only a second instance court is created for members of Congress but also extends the second instance for most of the privileged congressmen such as generals, ministers, governors.
2 The second bill is the creation of a National Court for Constitutional Guarantees in Criminal Matters. The functions of this new court will be to serve as the highest closing authority regarding criminal guarantees. For this purpose, the court would be able to unify jurisprudence by reviewing decisions made by supervisory judges “jueces de garantías” and the authority to issue interpretative judgments.
This Court will be able to move any supervisory judge (juez de garantías) at its discretion and he/she carry out duties of a supervisory judge in those investigations or criminal proceedings conducted against people constitutionally privileged and against any other person assigned by law. It is expected that the court eventually supervise the charges brought by the Attorney General’s Office.
One of the characteristics of this Court is the way its judges are appointed and the combination of several election systems. In essence, the members of this new Court shall be elected by the Supreme Court from a shortlist of three people that will be elected by an opposition or competition system. This system ensures both the election based on merits and the independence of the judiciary branch.Regarding the second bill, the senior Official stated that one of the mistakes of the accusatory system is that within the structure of the Colombian criminal justice there is not an agency that unifies jurisprudence and interpretation criteria of fundamental rights within criminal proceedings. This function is exceptionally performed by the Constitutional Court through an abstract control of constitutionality or through “tutela”* and by the Supreme Court through cassation; however, in Colombia does not exist an organism with coherence between justice and unification of decisions made by supervisory judges in the country. Therefore, the proposal of creating a Supervisory Court “Juez de garantías” within the criminal proceeding is a step to evidence fundamental rights in a criminal proceeding which is one of the characteristics of the current constitutional and criminal law.
The purpose of these bills is to increase protection of constitutional guarantees and fundamental rights. Likewise, the accusatory system will be strengthened and extended, as much as possible, to cases in which it was not possible to be applied. The ordinary justice will also be strengthened.
These Attorney General´s Office proposals are intended to strengthen the Law Enforcement System.
*Tutela: writ for protection of fundamental rights