Controversial amendments operated again on the criminal codes. PSD chairman Dragnea might get rid of sentence

The special committee set up to amend the justice laws, the so-called Iordache law (by the name of the committee’s chairman Florin Iordache, former justice minister who initiated the controversial GEO 13 that stirred large mass protests in Romania last year) has operated new amendments on the criminal code and the criminal procedure code, no less than 100 amendments. Some of them are major and could have serious impact on the ongoing lawsuits or even on some already pronounced sentences, including in PSD chair Liviu Dragnea’s files.

One of these amendments refers to the drafting of the motivation in the case of a final court ruling and to signing these documents. Therefore, a new provision has been introduced (it has not existed so far), that a final ruling (a sentence or an acquittal) must be motivated in 30 days the most or in 60 days in exceptional cases (if the judges motivate they couldn’t motivate the ruling in 30 days).

Moreover, the committee decided that the motivation must by signed by all judges who have attended the last court hearing, the deliberations and when the sentence has been ruled. If this is not happening, regardless of the grounds, then the file is retried, so the trial of the last hearing is resumed in a new panel.

The review of the sentence can be required any time, even if after the death of the convicted person.

The new provision is practically introducing a new extraordinary appeal- if the judges don’t motivate or sign the motivation of their ruling.

If this provision passes, it can smooth Liviu Dragnea’s path to obtain a revision of his conviction in the Referendum file (where he was sentenced to two years on probation), for in his case as well, the motivation of the sentence has not been signed by all judges who were ruling in his file and the ruling has been motivated eight months after it had been pronounced.

Other amendments

Another amendment operated on the justice laws says that prosecutors are not allowed to give any sort of information about criminal files, about the suspects and about the circumstances the criminal deeds had been committed.

Moreover, the amendments aim to discourage denunciators to collaborate with investigators.

Another new provision says that a hearing cannot last more than 6 hours per day, and that people sentenced for more crimes cannot cumulate more than three years prison sentence.

At the same time, the ruling coalition MPs proposed the cut from thwo thirds to half of the jail time before the release on parole.

Another controversial amendment says that bribery and influence peddling can be incriminated only if the deeds are denounced in six months at the most since the deed has been committed. There is no such deadline in the current legislation.

The search warrant must mention the precise assets or documents that prosecutors are searching for, while the seizure on the assets cannot be maintained more than a year during criminal prosecution or three years overall.

Another provision imposes a ban on the investigators to release in public images of the suspect being handcuffed.

Prosecutors are also banned from asking financial data of some people from the bank without a judge’s warrant and prosecutors cannot use anymore in the files of ordinary crimes tapings obtained based on the national safety law for terrorism deeds.