The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), declared by decision No. 441 as inadmissible the request for clarification of sentence No. 378 filed by the Attorney General of the Republic, Luisa Ortega Díaz .
The decision emphasizes that, since it is not a popular action, the Attorney General of the Republic, who was not the applicant of the interpretation in question, could hardly invoke a general interest or a «particular» conception of public order to request this clarification, and therefore the same is declared inadmissible due to lack of legitimacy.
The Chamber argued that for the purposes of the request for clarification, the Attorney General of the Republic was not the «appellant» or «recurrent» in the interpretation, and by it being a matter of mere right in which there was no restraint, she neither was a «Party», and therefore, despite invoking her status as representative of the «general interest» and «public order», can not be considered a «party» from the technical point of view, for the purposes of article 252 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
The ruling points that in this case is not in the presence of a popular action, in which is enough «simple interest» and it can be tried by any public or private person. The Maximum Interpreter of the Constitution pointed out that the interpretation resource requires a personal, direct and current interest, in the terms in which it was assumed in sentence number 378, object of the interpretation and whose clarification is requested.
The ruling makes clear that there are no doubts about the procedural attributions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the power to intervene as the owner of the criminal action or as a third party in good faith in judicial proceedings of the ordinary jurisdiction, within matters within its jurisdiction. Nor are there any doubts about the rights that the victim may exercise in criminal proceedings, including the possibility of filing complaints, making private accusations on their own in crimes of public or private action, and taking actions to claim civil liability arising from the punishable act.
