The “only yes is yes” law has caused at least 978 reductions in sentences for sexual offenders, of which 104 have led to the release of the offender from jail, according to data collected up to March 31 by the General Council of Power Judiciary (CGPJ) in office.
Unidas Podemos proposes a reform of the ‘only yes is yes’ that places violence and intimidation as aggravating factors
Further
The governing body of the judges has updated this Friday the official balance that it published on March 2. The published figure includes the reductions agreed by the Supreme Court (15), the National Court (1), the superior courts of justice (82) and the provincial courts (880) since the regulation came into force, on October 7 .
These resolutions have caused at least 104 aggressors to have been released before what would have corresponded to them under the previous law, although the CGPJ warns that some judicial body has not provided this information.
The statistics are not complete, since the CGPJ does not have the overall number of cases that have been reviewed, are being processed or are pending review. The percentage of reviews that imply a sentence reduction is 32%, although the body warns that seven of the 17 regional courts and 12 of the 52 provincial courts have not provided information on the total number of sentences they have reviewed. They have transferred only the information of those that have led to reductions in sentences.
The impact on the Supreme
Yes, the Supreme Court has done so, which has so far signed 15 revisions of sentences out of a total of 37 sentences analyzed that were in the appeal phase. That is to say, of procedures on which a final judgment had not been handed down when the ‘only yes is yes’ law came into force, but which have been able to be challenged under the prism of the new norm. Therefore, the Supreme Court has reduced the sentence for aggressors in 40.5% of the sentences reviewed.
In addition, the Second Chamber of the High Court has pending resolution of more than a hundred appeals against sentences that were already final before the new regulation came into force and that have been reduced by virtue of the basic principle of law that obliges to apply to the prisoner the most favorable penal law. The Chamber will hold a plenary session on June 6 and 7 to unify criteria.
This unification is key because the judges of the different territories are adopting contradictory positions. Only the hearings of Navarra, La Rioja, Cáceres, Badajoz and, to a lesser extent, Bizkaia are following the thesis of the Prosecutor’s Office, which defends that the sentences should only be reduced if the previous sentence cannot be imposed with the new law or if they are “disproportionate” with respect to the new regulation.
The CGPJ has updated the official balance of reductions in full political debate around the proposals that have been presented by the partners of the Government to prevent, in the future, sexual offenders from having lower sentences than those that would have corresponded to them with the previous Penal Code .
The focus has now moved to Congress, where the plenary session will vote this week on the reform proposal presented by the PSOE and to which United We Can have presented a battery of amendments. The dialogue between the partners continues to be rooted in the formula used to increase the penalties for cases involving violence or intimidation.
