Autor: Adrian Stan
Publicat în: Revista Universul Juridic nr. 4/2021
Articol disponibil online: aici.
Abstract: Non reformatio in pejus, i.e. the principle of non aggravation the legal situation in its own appeal, is one of the oldest principles of the criminal trial. And it’s understandable why. Failure to recognise it would give full freedom to the courts in an appeal brought in favour, to give the contrary effect to those referred to by the party.
In our brief observations, we tried to observe some possible effects of the recent Romanian Constitutional Court Decision (from 7 april 2021) regarding to this rule. And this is possible because in this moment, regarding to the Criminal Procedural Code, the appeal of the accusation regards two steps. First, the 10 days term begins from the moment the disposition of the court is received by the prosecutor. Then, before the judgement of the appeal, the accusation has to motivate it.
But the “first” appeal can not be argued, because the full text of the decision of first court is not comunicated yet. Since the Constitutional Court imposed the motivation, we propose that the appeal of the prosecutor has to be motivated when declared, and no in a later moment. The efect will be that the appeal could not be considered one in pejus, because of the first declaration without presenting the arguments.
Keywords: reformatio in pejus, appeal, Constitutional Court, reasoning.
