The Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas has rectified and reconvened the last scheduled sessions of the Stratvs case trial, which was in danger after those appointments had been suspended. It was a medical problem of one of the magistrates that make up the Chamber that led to the suspension of the sessions that were going to resume next week, and the resolution did not even establish a new calendar.
However, a day later, the Court has reconvened the same dates that were scheduled to finish the trial, between next Tuesday, July 21 and July 28. Otherwise, everything held so far could have been declared null, since the Criminal Procedure Law establishes that no more than 30 days can elapse between sessions of a trial. And in the case of Stratvs, the last one had been held on June 23.
For the moment, the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has not explained how the hearing will be held -given that the suspension, according to La Voz, responded to the medical leave of one of the judges, which in principle was expected to last for several weeks-, but they have confirmed that the scheduled appointments have finally been reconvened.
In total, about twenty sessions have already been held and only the statements of the last experts and the presentation of the conclusions by the accusations and the defenses are missing. However, a delay could have forced the entire trial to be repeated. In fact, after suspending the scheduled sessions this Tuesday, Magistrate Carlos Vielba gave the Prosecutor's Office and the rest of the parties involved in the procedure three days to rule on this new situation, expressly citing the consequences it could have under article 788.1 of the Criminal Procedure Law. This article establishes that the practice of the evidence during the trial must be carried out "in the consecutive sessions that are necessary", and also that between these sessions a "maximum limit of thirty days" may elapse.
It should be remembered that the hearing has already been paralyzed for months (in fact it had to end on April 3), but in this case it was due to the state of alarm, which implied the suspension of all procedural deadlines. Therefore, while the state of alarm was in force, that article of the Criminal Procedure Law did not apply. However, these circumstances no longer exist and if the trial had not continued now, the accused could have requested the nullity of the proceedings in the future, alleging that the principle of "immediacy" in the oral hearing was not respected.
