This question is relevant and represents a very current debate in the Spanish legal system, which suffers from constant delays in all its jurisdictions.
In order to mitigate the effects of delays in the handling of cases, the justice system has therefore created the mitigating circumstance of undue delays, allowing that when proceedings take excessively long, a reduction may be applied to the final sentence imposed in the judgment.
However, not all delays are justifiable, and for this mitigating factor to be accepted, a series of characteristics must be met, which the doctrine specifies in four essential requirements:
- the delay must be unjustified;
- it must be extraordinary;
- it must not be attributable to the conduct of the accused;
- it must be disproportionate to the complexity of the legal case being investigated.
It is essential to note that for the court to apply this mitigating factor, the appellant has the burden of specifically identifying the periods of inactivity and the reasons that caused them, as it is not sufficient to state generically that time has passed, since the judges point out that it is not their duty to investigate the case file ex officio to look for these procedural pauses.
Once it is confirmed that the requirements are met, the court distinguishes between the ordinary mitigating circumstance and the highly qualified mitigating circumstance depending on the total time elapsed. According to recent case law, the highly qualified mitigating circumstance can be applied after five years. This is of vital importance since while the ordinary mitigating circumstance reduces the sentence by half, the highly qualified mitigating circumstance allows it to be reduced by one or two degrees, potentially transforming prison sentences into simple fines.
As a consequence of this regulation, the overburdening of the judicial system ends up becoming a highly beneficial procedural strategy for the defense; since the more time passes, the greater the subsequent reduction of the sentence will be. This reveals that this mechanism operates as a necessary form of compensation for the State’s failure to deliver justice promptly and demonstrating that slow justice not only loses its social effectiveness, but ultimately softens punishment due to its own structural deficiencies.
Pilar Penadés