Thursday, March 28

The Supreme Court imposes a very serious sanction on a discharged civil guard who assisted a drugged driver as a lawyer

On May 7, 2017, MVSV, a drunk and drugged driver, ran over a group of cyclists at kilometer point 205.5 of the N-332 road, between Dénia and Oliva, causing the death of three of the athletes. The woman, who was finally sentenced to three years and nine months in prison, requested a court-appointed lawyer who turned out to be a Civil Guard captain on medical leave, assigned to the company of Santa María de Guía (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and with residence in Xeresa (Valencia).

The Unified Association of the Civil Guard (AUGC) denounced alleged irregularities in the instruction of the proceedings for the accident. The presence of the captain, who was supposedly “belligerent” with the Gandia Civil Guard Traffic Detachment Reporting Team, sowing “doubts” about his correct action, “generated a feeling of bewilderment among the intervening personnel as they did not understand each other in a principle in that said command was present at the scene”, assured the AUGC it’s a statement which initiated the initiation of a disciplinary file for a very serious offense with a sanction of seven months of suspension of employment. However, the first section of the Military Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) has overturned the sanction, thus dismissing an appeal by the State Attorney against a previous ruling by the Central Military Court that agreed with the lawyer and captain of the institute armed.

The disciplinary file for very serious misconduct was archived due to expiration, according to a resolution of the director general of the Civil Guard of July 5, 2018. Then, on July 23, “based on the same facts” the initiation was ordered. of a new disciplinary file. The captain considered that the order to initiate the new file referred to a report from the Superior Council of the Civil Guard issued within the previous one “for the same expired facts”, for which he alleged that the principle of legality had been infringed.

In his statement, the case file explained that he was on medical leave from March 30, 2015 to November 2017 and that he had been granted compatibility to practice law by virtue of a judicial resolution. The ruling of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid established the compatibility between his civil guard position and the practice of law “without prejudice to the strict fulfillment of his duties and with scrupulous respect for the schedule assigned to the position of job I do.” He also could not “act in matters related to or that refer to the activities carried out by the Civil Guard corps.”

The Central Military Court held that the Civil Guard “proscribes not only a double disciplinary sanction, but also a double sanctioning procedure on the same act, when, as in the present case, a file is annulled first and the disciplinary action is declared null.” The sentence estimated the captain’s appeal against the very serious sanction. In addition, the State Attorney’s Office “widely exceeded” the one-month period to appeal the ruling. “The sentence of the central Military Court of September 28, 2021 was notified to the State Attorney on the 30th of that month. And it is also clear that the writ of preparation of the appeal was not presented until November 18 of that year, when the aforementioned sentence had already become final”, indicates the Supreme Court.



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