Constitutional magistrates support hardening the criminal response to disobedience

The magistrates of the Constitutional Court have welcomed the Government's proposal to punish the crime of disobedience to the court with prison terms.

The initiative has found a positive echo among the judges after the difficulties they encountered in defining at all times the legal response to the initiatives of the

Catalan

.

The dominant criterion in the Constitutional Court is that in the face of the illegal referendum on October 1, no dissuasive norms could be applied which, they believe, could have stopped the decisions of the independence leaders.

In view of this experience, the legal reform in which the Ministry of Justice is working is seen by these magistrates as potentially useful to reduce the probability of episodes of this nature, because it would mean having preventive, dissuasive legislation, which the State does not had then in his hands.

It would happen, yes, to toughen the penalties associated with the crime.

The Constitutional Court does not have to be involved in a legislative change of this type because it does not correspond to it.

But in the analyzes that the Government's initiative has provoked among various magistrates, it has been highlighted that since the illegal referendum of 9-N 2014 in Catalonia and the second, on 1-O 2017, the Constitutional Court issued numerous personal notifications to the members of the Catalan Executive and those of the Bureau of Parliament.

Those communications warned them of the possible criminal consequences of disregarding court orders.

But all this by virtue of the current criminal offenses, which only provide for fines and disqualification for those responsible for such crimes.

Preventive prison

The toughening of these penal types would suppose, according to the magistrates, a more effective warning against initiatives that imply to disregard the orders of the Constitutional Court or to persevere in initiatives that the court has prohibited.

They recall that the final phase of the

, in September and October 2017, represented a qualitative leap in the response of the legal system, when a complaint was filed for the crime of rebellion against the pro-independence leaders.

The same circles wonder what would have been the effectiveness of a normative provision that, by aggravating the crime of disobedience to the Constitutional Court, included the possibility of agreeing to the preventive detention of public offices that repeatedly failed to comply with the requirements.

The current article 410 of the Penal Code provides for a fine of three to twelve months and disqualification from six months to two years for “the authorities or public officials who openly refuse to give due compliance to judicial resolutions, decisions or orders of the authority superior, issued within the scope of their respective competence and covered with the legal formalities ”.

The precautionary measure of preventive detention does not apply to these behaviors, since they do not carry a prison sentence.