Application for non-admission by the Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court of 15 January 2024

In the review procedure, the Prosecutor's report guides the Chamber's decision. This is the one that was issued.

The report

• Issued on 15 January 2024 by the Prosecutor's Office of the Supreme Court, in review appeal 20914/2023 (arising from the roll of the Provincial Court of Bizkaia).
• Tenor: non-admission of the application (A.36).
• Technique: restrictive interpretation of the concept of a new fact under Article 954 of the Criminal Procedure Act.

What the report does not contain

• The examination of the conclusions of the forensic expert report (A.33): repeated and oriented alteration of the trial's record.
• The examination of pages 35, 125 and 132-140 and of their absence of assessment in the case (A.4, A.10).
• An explanation of why such elements, if true, would not affect the justice of the conviction.

The framework of the reporting body

Article 124 of the Constitution entrusts the Public Prosecutor's Office with the defence of legality and the public interest — not that of convictions as a result. Faced with the expert allegation that a trial's record was altered, the defence of legality admits two coherent outcomes: to promote the clarification or to refute the expert examination. There is no record that the report does either of the two.

How to verify it

Look in the report for the treatment of the expert's conclusions: how many lines, what arguments. The extent of that treatment — or its absence — is the verifiable datum of this annex.