The General Council of Justice (CGPJ) will examine the actions of the Investigative Court 1 of Arrecife (Lanzarote) in the case of Raúl Díaz Cachón, the man accused of killing and dismembering his wife Romina Celeste Núñez on January 1, 2019 in this Canary Island . The suspect was released on January 13 after spending four years in pre-trial detention, the maximum legal limit, and no date has yet been set for his trial. Sources from the governing body of the judges point out that the disciplinary body of the council has already accepted for processing the complaint of the victim’s family lawyer, who denounced the “lax” attitude of the court and regretted both the judges and the prosecution will “getting into play” the defense’s “delaying maneuvers” to delay the investigation and allow for his release.
The complaint, received through the Citizen Attention Unit, has already reached CGPJ disciplinary action advocate Ricardo Conde and is being processed. Conde must now obtain a report from the court before deciding whether to open a disciplinary file, which could result in a sanction against the head of that body.
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Attorney Emilia Zeballos’ complaint details the obstacles the judicial investigation has encountered, particularly since January 2020 when an expert opinion was commissioned to determine whether or not a pair of scissors purchased by the defendant before the crime was suitable for use slaughter of human flesh. The document was entrusted to the Civil Guard on November 18, 2019, but in January 2020 it was transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensics of the Ministry of Justice of the Government of the Canary Islands. On June 24, the court repeated its request to that body, which responded that it needed the scissors sent. The court sent them on August 27, but almost a year passed without the Institute of Forensic Medicine giving a notification, nor did the court demand the document. On July 9, 2021, the court insisted on his application. And in March 2022, he delivered an ultimatum to the PA, asking them to submit the report within 10 days. The expert report finally arrived on April 8, 2022. According to the lawyer, the case was practically paralyzed in these two years, although the technical report was “only circumstantial”.
The letter that led to the opening of the CGPJ’s investigation said: “It is unacceptable that the Court should have embarked on the game of practicing the evidence with scissors, the purpose of which was to delay it ; It is also unacceptable that the public prosecutor’s office, which must ensure the legality of the procedure, has agreed that for more than a year it has been practically limited to the diligence of the scissors, the purpose of which was irrelevant”. The attorney also criticized the delay in obtaining a psychological report on the defendant requested by his defense, another process that the attorney said was “irrelevant” because it was not a psychiatric report “that would determine the guilt or circumstances of the suspect could affect time to impose the penalty”.
The Supreme Court of the Canary Islands (TSJC) already conducted a first internal investigation after learning of Díaz Cachón’s release and found that no dysfunction had occurred since the case was never paralyzed. Three different judges have passed through Arrecife Inquiry Court 1 in four years, but according to the TSJC inquiry there is “no evidence” that any of them “could have accepted any responsibility”. The report, while acknowledging that “some anomalies in the excessive time it takes to produce some expert reports, despite their extreme complexity, and which should be avoided in cases such as the present one-prisoner case,” it points out that the only one responsible is that Institute of Legal Medicine.
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