The Constitutional Court (TC) has once again protected the former deputy of Unidas Podemos (UP) Alberto Rodríguez, this time upholding the appeal he presented against the decision of the then president of the Congress of Deputies, Meritxell Batet, to withdraw his seat after after he was convicted by the Supreme Court (TS) for kicking a police officer during a demonstration held in 2014 in Tenerife against the ‘Wert law’.
According to the legal sources consulted by Europa Press, the progressive majority – of 7 judges against 4 – has endorsed the presentation written by María Luisa Balaguer, who advocated agreeing with Rodríguez regarding the agreement adopted on October 22, 2021 by Batet.
The draft of the sentence reasons that, once the prison sentence was annulled, maintaining only the fine, it was not possible to apply article 6.2 a) of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (Loreg), which caused the loss of the seat. .
Said provision of the Loreg establishes that “those convicted by a final sentence, to imprisonment, are ineligible for the period that the sentence lasts.”
It should be remembered that the Supreme Court sentenced Rodríguez to a prison sentence of 1 month and 15 days as the author of a crime of attacking an agent of authority with the accessory penalty of special disqualification for the right to passive suffrage during the time of the sentence. .
The high court, however, replaced the prison sentence with a fine of 540 euros, although it clarified that this replacement of the main sentence did not affect the accessory sentence, which was what ultimately led to Rodríguez losing his seat in The deputies congress.
On January 16, the Constitutional Court upheld another appeal for protection, the one presented by Rodríguez against said sentence, considering that it represented a “disproportionate sacrifice” to the former ‘purple’ leader because he lost his seat.
Thus, by establishing in its first sentence that the penalty imposed was not appropriate, the Plenary Session has now resolved that the penalty that should have been agreed upon – the fine – could not result in the loss of the seat.
That first sentence had the joint dissenting vote of the judges of the conservative wing – Ricardo Enríquez, Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel and César Tolosa – who argued that the Constitutional Court should have rejected Rodríguez’s appeal. The four highlighted that that was “the first time” that a ruling by the TC modified the sentence that should be imposed on a convicted person.
For his part, progressive magistrate Ramón Sáez cast his own vote because, even though he agreed with Rodríguez’s protection, he believes that the TC should have gone further and appreciated that his right to the presumption of innocence was violated.
