Spanish
Santo Domingo.- Opposition lawmakers criticized the amendment project to the Criminal Procedure Code, approved on Wednesday by the Chamber of Deputies, considering that the piece grants a lot of power to the Public Ministry, which could not guarantee a fair due process.
The deputy for the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD), Charlie Mariotti Paz and the deputy for the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), Ramon Raposo, expressed their discontent by indicating that the code was worked on in an accelerated manner and instead of correcting the flaws linked to due process and the actions of the Public Ministry, what was approved was to "positivize" those practices.
Mariotti Paz, one of the five votes against the initiative, considered that what the approved text presents an "evident imbalance" that justifies the inefficiency and lack of capacity to achieve definitive convictions.
“It was done very quickly, I believe we could have used the time better, unfortunately, and that's why this Criminal Procedure Code today leaves much to be desired”, pointed out the PLD legislator.
He recalled that a modern Criminal Procedure Code was expected, in line with that legal framework, which would facilitate more economical, faster, and more expeditious access to justice. "The opposite happened," he said, assuring that even rulings of the Constitutional Court were ignored, causing longer processes.
He also pointed out problems in accessing the evidentiary folder and worrying aspects related to pre-trial detention, although he highlighted that a paragraph was included that establishes that, once the term set by the judge has expired, pre-trial detention ceases immediately and definitively.
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On his part, Raposo warned that this type of hasty approvals generates social discontent and anticipated that Congress will receive a flood of initiatives to try to modify again a code that has just been approved.Expert opinion debate
The session reached its highest point of tension when article 211 was debated, which regulates the appointment of experts in judicial proceedings. During the first reading, that article was altered to remove the Public Prosecutor's Office's power to appoint experts in the preparatory stage, a modification that caused strong disagreements among the legislators. Congressman Amado Díaz explained on this aspect that said faculty only applies in a first phase, since once the process is brought to court any proceeding must be authorized by a judge. To illustrate his position, Díaz cited as an example the case of a woman who was a victim of rape. He pointed out that it is necessary to extract biological samples immediately, before administering retrovirals, to determine if the aggressor could be a carrier of HIV or another disease. He warned that, if in such a situation it is required to wait for the authorization of a judge, time could run out and the test would lose effectiveness. The piece, which incorporates new elements that raise the number of articles in the regulations to almost 500, must return to the Senate of the Republic.
