ACCYDED - Citizens Association Against Corruption and for the Defense of the Rule of Law

Red line

red line

In football, a line a few centimetres wide decides whether a goal stands, and the referee can get it wrong. In justice, the red line separates legality from crime. A judge may also err; what is unacceptable is dozens of judges and prosecutors erring always in the same direction, precisely when the accused is someone nobody wants convicted.

The right to be wrong and its limits

The image of the red line is often used to separate the acceptable from the intolerable in politics, in society and in the courts. In sport, referees rule on lines barely five centimetres thick, and their decisions always spark controversy. But can a judge read the law exactly backwards when dealing with someone who has broken it?

Our judicial system rightly accepts that judges are human and may make mistakes when applying the law. That is what appeals are for. What is hard to accept is systematic error: when more than fifty supposedly independent judges agree, time and again, not to find offences of misappropriation whose conceptual basis is as elementary as one plus one equals two.

When error stops being accidental

Our association has documented, in its own proceedings, what it considers a repeated failure of the judicial system to recognise economic crimes committed by people whom, as we allege, it is not convenient to indict. In our view, all manner of procedural devices have been used in those rulings to justify decisions contrary to the law.

One isolated mistake is human. Fifty mistakes in the same direction form a pattern. And a pattern demands an explanation which, to this day, no institution has been willing to give.

The role of the Public Prosecutor's Office

Even more surprising has been the attitude of the Public Prosecutor's Office which, in our experience, has systematically backed the judge's reasoning, going so far as to argue in its reports whatever was needed to justify conclusions contrary to the law: metaphorically, that one plus one equals three. We have brought these facts to the attention of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the Prosecution Inspectorate, and have observed, among others, the following irregularities:

  • Reports without an identifiable signature: documents signed generically by «the deputy chief prosecutor», with no name, even though they are acts of public servants subject to accountability.
  • Reports with no record of filing: documents bearing no court entry stamp which have nevertheless been relied on in judgments.
  • Doubts about impartiality: cases in which the same prosecutor acts both in a proceeding and in the case opened for the alleged perjury of a witness in that very matter.

The Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor's Office binds prosecutors to the principles of legality and impartiality. When practices like these are reported, the least that can be expected is a transparent investigation.

One error is human; fifty errors in the same direction are a system.

We are looking for a judge who dares

If anyone wonders why no one has so far acknowledged facts we consider so flagrant, the answer is uncomfortable. Admitting that the red line was crossed in one case would expose the error of dozens of colleagues. Corporatism acts as a dam: nobody wants to be the first.

We do not claim that this website can replace the courts; establishing the facts is for the courts. But we do assert citizens' right to denounce publicly what they consider a breakdown of the rule of law. We hold documentation on each of these irregularities and make it available to anyone with a legitimate interest in examining it through our contact page.

What we propose

  1. That every report by the Public Prosecutor's Office identify by name the prosecutor who signs it.
  2. That no document lacking a filing record may be incorporated into a judicial decision.
  3. A strengthened recusal regime preventing the same prosecutor from acting in connected cases with conflicting interests.
  4. Effective protection for those who report irregularities within the justice system itself, in line with Law 2/2023 on whistleblower protection.

We are still looking for the brave judge or prosecutor who dares to point to the red line and say, out loud, that one plus one always equals two. Until then, the responsibility lies with all of us: report, share and demand that justice be held to account.

Further reading