The thesis of the Ministry of Equality that the sentence reductions by the law of the only yes is yes are a matter of a minority of judges has been little by little crushed by the reality of the data. When the reform of sexual crimes has completed six and a half months of validity, 48 of the 50 provincial courts have reviewed final sentences to reduce the sentence that they themselves had imposed with the previous law.
The only two provinces that have not done so are Soria and Ávila, according to the balance of official data that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) offered last Friday. Actually, in Soria there has been a reduction, although it was issued by the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León when resolving the appeal against the conviction of the Audiencia de Soria: two years less for the person convicted of rape.
As for Ávila, the president of the Provincial Court, Javier García Encinar, explained yesterday on Cadena Cope that there were no cases of sexual assault in his district to review and that therefore they had not lowered anything. The only two cases they examined were abuses -without violence or intimidation-, a crime that has not been so affected by the legal reform promoted by Podemos.
As for the Superior Courts of Justice, 16 of the 17 have handed down sentences in which they specify that, although the sexual assaults were committed when the reform of sexual crimes was not yet in force, it is applied to the accused because it entails lighter penalties. . Only the Superior Court of Justice of Cantabria has not issued resolutions in this regard, according to official data. Until this Thursday there have been at least 986 reductions in sentences as a result of the yes is yes, and a minimum of 105 immediate releases.
The data offered by the Council was updated as of March 31 and totaled 978 reductions. Since then there have been at least eight new sentence reductions, bringing the total number to 986 cases.
The most recent was the one issued by the TSJ of Andalusia, which reduced the sentence of a man by six months for abusing his granddaughters when they were eight years old. It also highlights a recent release ordered by the Provincial Court of Almería. The convicted man, who raped a woman in the Viator municipality in 2008, was not prosecuted until 2015 because he was in Romania, from where he was extradited to Spain. The same judicial body sentenced him to six years for a crime of rape and it was last Monday when he decided to release him because “he should be set at the minimum limit allowed by law.” Under the new law, this sentence was reduced to four years.
Another case to highlight is the decision of the Court of Seville, which applied the largest reduction provided for in the yes is yes law because the minimum for cases of aggravated rape has dropped from 12 to seven years.
In addition, one of the five remaining sentences was ordered by the Supreme Court, two by the TSJ of Castilla y León, while the rest were handed down by the Courts of Murcia and Asturias.
Most of the sentence reductions are still subject to appeal, before the TSJ or in last instance before the Supreme Court. Only when the last resort is resolved or its presentation is waived can the reduction be given as firm. They are already part of those issued in the first two months of validity, when the prosecutors, before receiving the order to oppose everything, supported sentence reductions.
Next June, the Supreme Court will address in plenary session the criteria to resolve the hundreds of appeals that it has pending. Their own sentences on the matter issued so far suggest that most of the revisions agreed by the hearings and the higher courts will end up being validated.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project