The court of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court that judged the cause of the procés has dismissed the motions for annulment raised by Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Dolors Bassa, Raul Romeva and Jordi Sánchez against the order that applied to the sentence the penal reform that repealed the sedition and modified embezzlement.
The contested order maintained the sentences of absolute disqualification for Junqueras (13 years), Romeva (12 years), Turull (12 years) and Bassa (12 years), since the new type of attenuated embezzlement was not considered applicable to their case, and by deem appropriate said penalty for the crimes of disobedience in competition with embezzlement. The former president of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sánchez, was sentenced for the new crime of public disorder.
The Chamber rejects all the allegations made by said appellants who considered that the fundamental rights to defense, to a process with all the guarantees, and to criminal legality, among others, had been violated, as well as the principles of criminal accusation and proportionality.
The court refutes all the arguments about the violation of the rights of these five defendants. Regarding the non-application of the attenuated type of embezzlement, it stresses that “none of the defendants in this case was accused, as is insisted, for committing spending items to satisfy collective interests or, even less, to finance an activity framed in the exercise of a fundamental right”.
It also repeats that “if an authority or public official allocates public funds to a criminal or unlawful activity -in our case, the holding of a legally prohibited referendum- what exists, simply, is a diversion of public funds by those who are those in charge of defining their destination and who, by acting in the manner exposed, appropriate these funds. And as such an appropriative act implies a profit motive”.
Regarding the alleged violation of the principle of proportionality of the sentence, the court points out that with the disappearance of the crime of sedition, with the consequent rupture of the medial contest with this infraction, the new punitive framework authorized the imposition of a minimum sentence of fifteen years of absolute disqualification associated with the continued crime of embezzlement of public funds.
It adds that “the contest with the crime of sedition has been broken, which has been repealed, and it has been for all purposes by a reform that, as our order clearly expressed, is not limited to a rectification of the penalties to be imposed, rather, it restructures the relationship between the criminal types of new statement; Therefore, our task required more than a mere analysis of the contrast between the sentences imposed, as seems to be the case now”.
In response to allegations made by Oriol Junqueras regarding the violation of his fundamental right to political participation, the Chamber states: “It is not noted how maintaining Mr. Junqueras of the sentence of absolute disqualification imposed can violate his rights of representation and participation policy. The limitation of these rights is inherent to such a penalty imposed according to law”.
