“The group psychology allowed everyone to act as a unit in which they encouraged each other, and none of them dared to anger the judge and the prosecutor, even though they had doubts.” The final report of the prosecutor Tomás Herranz, which the Indictment against the former judge Manuel Penalva, the retired prosecutor Miguel Ángel Subírán and four agents of the money laundering group of the Balearic National Police, revolves around this idea that has been brought against the six officers since last June for alleged irregularities in the investigation of the case against Bartolomé Cursach, the biggest nightclub businessman in Mallorca, is pending. This Tuesday, the prosecutor finalized his conclusions, sticking to his original request for prison sentences totaling more than 500 years for the six defendants.
Prosecutors have maintained most of their allegations and have barely retracted some of the obstruction of justice counts they accused some defendants of. Former judge Manuel Penalva faces a sentence of 118 years in prison for one crime of disclosing secrets, 15 crimes of unlawful imprisonment, two of obstruction of justice and two of judicial subversion, while prosecutors are claiming 121 years against former prosecutor Miguel Ángel for the same crimes. For the four National Police officers, the requested sentences range from 83 to 110 years in prison for a series of similar crimes. Herranz has stated that in his last letter he did not withdraw the allegations about the alleged disclosure of secrets, even though the court declared the inclusion of the WhatsApp conversations on which they were based null and void. “In the event that we were not satisfied with the verdict at that time, you cannot blame the prosecutor for withdrawing the facts,” said Herranz, who insists that he disagrees with the decision.
After the conclusions, the prosecutor opened the presentation of the final reports in which he accused Judge Penalva of acting “with bias and prejudice” and of not having been “impartial” in the decisions he made throughout the trial. “They had a black conscience,” he said of the six defendants, whom he accused of acting guided by prejudice and encouraging each other. “Socrates is credited with affirming the four qualities appropriate to the judge: courteous listening, wise responding, prudent deliberation, and impartial decision.” I look around the room and see that the court is endowed with these virtues. “When I turn my eyes and see the dock in which a judge at that time is serving, I see that because he did neither one nor the other, he is all the more likely to fail to consider carefully and decide impartially,” Herranz began Speech.
“Prejudices and Preferences”
For more than three and a half hours he has been rehearsing the allegations contained in his letter piece by piece and, in particular, questioning the actions of the investigating judge. For Herranz, the judge made the decisions before testifying, even when there was no evidence of a crime, and took no measures “to prevent his prejudices and preferences from influencing his decisions.” Herranz has reviewed what he considers to be unlawful arrests made as part of the investigation into the so-called ORA case, which investigated the alleged manipulation of the competition for the award of limited parking services in Palma. A competition that, as Herranz recalled, “did not present any irregularities” and in which there was no evidence of a crime and why the case was archived.
For the prosecutor, the investigation of the ORA case was “prospective” and began with the testimony of a witness who did not indicate a “source of evidence.” For the prosecutor, it is “astonishing” that a case was initiated with a statement in which “there is nothing, everything is speculation, everything is discussed and said,” because, in his opinion, the judge should have told the plaintiff at that moment: “Go away.” And as soon as you have proof, you come back.” The State Department considers that the arrests made as part of the investigation were criminal because “they were arbitrary and unjustified,” and has responded indicated that the aim of the arrests of several officers was to denounce third parties, an action that the prosecutor He has confessed “repulses” him.
What influences the most is what happens next. So you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe to
During his intervention, there were numerous moments in which he read the messages exchanged by the defendant in a WhatsApp group, which the defendant claimed to be null and void since the information was obtained illegally through the intervention of the cell phones of two journalists in two Sentences considered unlawful. The prosecutor read a series of messages from Penalva in these chats in which he said it was a “bitch” not to be able to “book” one of the businessmen under investigation for a new case. “It’s a bitch, he says, go with the impartiality, go with the weighting,” said the prosecutor with some sarcasm. At the end of his lecture, Herranz wanted to summarize the reasons for the facts that, in his opinion, have an explanation in mass psychology. “There are numerous examples of the nourishment of group psychology, which allowed everyone to act as a unit, in which they encouraged each other and none of them dared to contradict the judge and the prosecutor despite doubts,” emphasized Herranz, who also spoke to Sigmund cited Freud and Ortega y Gasset theorizing about the “group bias” that can lead the judge to make a prejudgment of guilt that is far removed from what an assessment of the facts should be regardless of the person’s beliefs. brought to trial.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits