Rui Pinto case: judge accuses prosecutors of ‘disdain’ for court | OneFootball

The presiding judge of the panel that, in April, acquitted “hacker” Rui Pinto of 241 crimes held this week that the Public Prosecutor’s Office had shown “disregard” for the court by submitting an appeal bearing the same date as another one that had already been rejected by the judges.

On 11 June, Judge Tânia Loureiro Gomes had refused the appeal by prosecutors Vera Camacho and André Ribeiro da Silva, submitted on 1 June, considering it out of time, since another appeal was simultaneously pending before the Constitutional Court. That appeal would later be dismissed, with the decision becoming final on 12 June.

Even so, on 22 June, the prosecutors again insisted on the appeal to the Lisbon Court of Appeal, but kept the date as 1 June, “that is,” the judge wrote, “without having introduced any change whatsoever to the text” that had already been rejected.

“Such procedural conduct, which does not go unnoticed by the court because of the disregard shown,” the judge added, while nevertheless allowing the appeal, although she considered its date to be “irregular.”

In contesting Rui Pinto’s acquittal, the prosecutors argued that the court appeared to have proceeded from “a deeply distrustful view of the conduct of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”

The judges’ alleged distrust was linked — according to the ruling that acquitted Rui Pinto in the second trial of the so-called “Football Leaks” case — to the separation of the proceedings carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which had already led to the hacker’s first conviction, a four-year suspended sentence. For judges Tânia Loureiro, Catarina Cortez Silva and João Rodrigues, the Public Prosecutor’s Office appears to have adopted a kind of criminal persecution of Rui Pinto, unjustified in the panel’s view.

“What is at issue are violations of the fundamental and absolute principles of the dignity of the human person and of the Portuguese Republic as a democratic state governed by the rule of law, as well as of the fundamental right to effective judicial protection, reflected in the right to obtain a decision within a reasonable time and through fair proceedings,” they stated.

It is especially this argument that the Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking to challenge in its appeal to the Lisbon Court of Appeal, ultimately asking the appellate judges to have the lower court redo its decision. The prosecutors argue that the judges erred in considering “the separation of the proceedings carried out (…) unconstitutional, since it was legally grounded, necessary and proportionate, given the specific procedural constraints of the case.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.