Sometimes, the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) passes judgments to annul own verdicts. Such cases undermine the essence of justice one of the foundations of which is the irreversible character of the solutions of the last court, Vladislav Gribincea, chairman of the Legal Resources Center, stated in an interview for Radio Free Europe’s Moldovan Service. According to him, such situations make the people not to have confidence not only in that 1% of cases, but also in the other 99% of cases, strengthening thus the perception that justice is different for different persons, depending on circumstances, IPN reports.
The Legal Rejoices Center analyzed how often and why the Supreme Court of Justice reviewed its own decisions during three years. ”The annulment of irrevocable judgments was requested in over 1,600 cases. The Supreme Court of Justice accepted only 70 requests, which is about 5.5%. We have questions towards 28 of the 70 decisions. It is not a big deal, but given that in the case of almost 2% of the submitted applications, the revisions are accepted for reasons that can be hardly explained, the irrevocability of justice at the Supreme Court of Justice is brought into question,” stated Vladislav Gribincea.
According to the expert, when the decision becomes irrevocable, as jurists call it, this should no longer be discussed. However, this rule is not absolute and if new circumstances appear, if someone is convicted of an offense committed when the decision is taken or in connection with this, the irrevocable court judgment can be yet annulled, but in exceptional cases.
Vladislav Gribincea noted that something unordinary must appear for the Supreme Court of Justice to annul its decisions. The experts analyzed the field namely because the ECHR convicted Moldova for the fact that the SCJ annuled own judgments for no evident reasons in 20 decisions. “Not 2%, but 0.02% of the cases can be exceptional. In the 28 cases of 70, which is in 40%, the legal conditions weren’t met, to our mind. Why? In almost half of them, which is in 12 of 28, the Supreme Court of Justice ascertains by revision that it made a mistake when it calculated the appeal period or a judge took part in the examination of a case, but shouldn’t have taken part,” stated the expert.
Vladislav Gribincea also said that these are not revisions motives, but apparently there is a logical justification – the law was violated and the shortcomings should be removed from the procedures. To solve the given problem, the law should be fully obeyed, while the explanation for deviations from the letter of the law resides in interests, for particular causes.
