The Granada Bar Association has suspended for 45 days for the exercise of its functions Carlos Aranguezthe lawyer defending Juana Rivas, the Granada woman sentenced to prison for child abduction for refusing to deliver her children to the father, whom she had denounced for mistreatment.
The sanction comes after a complaint before the body filed in September 2021 by the judge Manuel Pinarmagistrate of the Criminal Court number 1 of Granada, who instructed the case and sentenced Rivas to five years in prison, a sentence that the Supreme Court reduced to two and a half years.
Piñar alleged in a complaint that Aránguez has engaged in “disrespectful and disrespectful behavior” during the statements to the media and press releases released by the lawyer, who has repeatedly accused Piñar of “obvious partiality” throughout the judicial process.
In fact, Rivas and his defense have come to denounce Piñar for malfeasance because of the comments and value judgments against Rivas in the court order that denied the prisoner’s release from prison after a partial pardon from the Government that reduced her sentence of two and a half years in prison by half, so that the convicted he did not have to enter prison as he did not have a criminal record.
In that order, which denied Rivas’ release from prison, Piñar considered the mother “a danger to her children” and, according to her defense, spread hoaxes and falsehoods about the woman. However, this complaint has not prospered and the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia has dismissed Rivas’s last appeal, understanding that the “attribution of ideological motivations to a judicial resolution” cannot open “the door of prevarication, if the ideology does not supplant law enforcement.”
“Opinion is a right and a duty that the College should protect instead of punishing”
The Illustrious Bar Association of Ganada opened a disciplinary file against Rivas’s lawyer and the Ethics Delegate Commission considered that the lawyer’s conduct “must be considered a lack of probity, loyalty and respect” for the judge, which constitutes a serious breach of the statutes of the Spanish Lawyer.
In a statement sent to the media, Aránguez has shown his “concern” about this decision of the bar association and has assured that he maintains his accusation of partiality against the judge. He has shown himself “willing” to take the case to the Constitutional Court, which “will be able to rule on the partiality or not of Judge Piñar in the Juana Rivas case.”
“In a democratic society every jurist has the right to express his opinion. To say that a judge is manifestly biased (I said it and I stand by it) and provide multiple arguments to support that statement, it can never be sanctioned by a Bar Association”, affirms Aránguez, who recalls that professional associations “are a medieval institution, already disappeared in most of civilized countries”. Expressing their opinion on judicial decisions that affect those they represent is “a right and a duty that the Association should protect instead of sanctioning”, lamented the lawyer.
In his statement, Aránguez also recalls that the same bar association that suspended him was the one that sued for the crime of professional intrusion against Paqui Granadosthe legal adviser of the Women’s Center of Maracena, “who publicly supported Juana Rivas” and whom she had “the honor of defending, obtaining dismissal in the Investigating Court” whose appeal was never admitted by the Provincial Court, for which “they lost the case.”
“The five-year prison sentence initially imposed by Judge Piñar was successively rectified in higher instances, in which our legal arguments were accepted. And it is essential to underline this aspect, for obvious reasons,” insists the lawyer.
At the same time, it emphasizes that the TSJA has agreed with the judge regarding its impartiality, although in its order it considers Judge Piñar’s use of social networks “inappropriate”, in which he publicly declares himself against the feminist politics and calls into question the current legislation that
protects victims of gender violence.