The prosecutor of the Chamber of the Supreme Court who acted as prosecutor in the trial of the procés, Javier ZaragozaHe defended that transparency was the best weapon to fight against the parallel trials that could have arisen during the most mediatic hearing of the last decade. "Broadcasting the trial live neutralised any parallel trials," said the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office during his speech in the Observatory La pena de telediario' organised by the consultancy firm Proa Comunicación, the first in Spain to create a department that aims to fight against parallel trials in the public arena.
Together with the public prosecutor, speakers at the event held in Madrid's Club Financiero Génova included the Supreme Court judge Antonio del MoralHe is the head of the criminal law department at Cuatrecasas, Luis Jordana de Pozasand the head of courts of El Mundo, Ángela Martialay.
"Society has the right to know what happens in judicial processes", added Zaragoza, who argued that this transparency "is a guarantee and helps society to have confidence in the administration of justice". In the same vein, the rest of the speakers also took the same position, highlighting the need for the information transmitted to the media to be "truthful" and for each agent in the proceedings to do their job properly.
Martialay stressed the importance of those accused in legal proceedings also realising that they have public exposure and dare to speak to the press. "The media are not going to stop talking because someone does not want to talk about it," he argued. For this reason, he added, "it is important that the parties give their version to journalists and that they tell the truth, that they do not lie".
Lengthy instructions encourage parallel trials
The four speakers also criticised the excessive length of judicial proceedings, which sometimes last for more than a decade in the investigation phase, something that is clearly detrimental to those under investigation. They gave examples of how people with normal lives have lost their jobs, their businesses and even loved ones during the investigation and years later have been declared innocent.
This must be remedied, agreed some of the participants, mostly lawyers specialising in criminal law, who criticised the fact that on many occasions their clients have been arrested, handcuffed and filmed by the media in order to appear in the press as suspects and have then been exonerated. The participants also criticised the defencelessness which, in their opinion, lawyers experience when they are notified of court rulings even after these decisions appear in the media.
Jordana de Pozas himself pointed out that the victims of these parallel trials are not only individuals, but also legal entities. "At the international level, there are companies that sell information on alleged 'criminal records' of companies all over the world and make these lists based on information that appears in the press," he said. "Then, the compliance systems of financial institutions take these lists into account when deciding on financing; there is a Spanish bank, whose name I won't give, that closes everything to anyone who appears on it," he said.
"Judges should establish some mechanism of communication that objectifies the information that the media receives and lawyers, and our clients, have to learn that we have to talk to the press". "We have to sit down, we can't cloister ourselves because in the end we end up coming out more and worse." "You have to sit down with serious journalists and tell your side of the story."Jordana de Pozas added, an idea that was also underlined by Martialay. "The defendants should look for an agency or speak directly to the press to give their version, because if not, someone else will give it", said the only journalist at the table, who said that "the secrecy of the proceedings only favours the parallel trial".
Del Moral: "The judicial process itself is already a punishment".
Del Moral, for his part, was categorical in seeing few solutions to a problem such as parallel trials which, he said, is not a problem of today, but which Benito Pérez Galdós had already pointed out in his writings on the Fuencarral crime, the investigation of which was broadcast practically live by the press. "There is a large percentage of the parallel trial that is inevitable", he said, referring to the fact that "the judicial process itself is already a punishment" and that this punishment will only be repaired, "for believers, in the final judgement".
The four speakers criticised the insults and abuses of criticism that exist on social networks by people outside the proceedings, who are not professionals in journalism, but who intervene in the creation of these parallel trials. "This is manipulated, insulted and this is not acceptable", indicated Zaragoza, who recalled what also happened during 11M, when he himself said that he suffered "a huge media campaign in which not only false information was given, but personal attacks were made on legal operators, such as Judge Juan del Olmo or the prosecutor Olga Sánchez". "This should be banned," said the prosecutor.