Supreme Court Appeal Cases Left Hanging As Bucharest Court Suspends Five-Judge Panels

The Appeal Court decided to suspend the effects of the ICCJ’s decision to re-select its five-judge panels, which was done at the behest of a Constitutional Court ruling earlier in the month, until a final decision on the matter is reached.

Dragnea’s attorneys requested the suspension, stating that ICCJ did not wait for the reasoning of the Constitutional Court’s decision to be published, which will offer exact guidelines on how to interpret the November 7 ruling.

The PSD leader’s defenders said that it is unclear whether constitutional judges wanted the entire five-judge panels re-drawn or if their ruling applied only for the panel's non-randomly drawn chairmen, who according to previous legal regulations were selected from magistrates with top Supreme Court offices.

In effect, all cases handled by the court’s five-judge panels have also been suspended until the formation of new panels, or a new decision overturning the suspension.

The Appeal Court also admitted a constitutional challenge requested by Dragnea on the legal provision regarding the selection of the five-judge panels.

The Supreme Court re-selected its five-judge panels through a random draw on November 9, following the Constitutional Court decision – with one of the panels to handle the appeal in case where Dragnea was sentenced to prison for his involvement in fictitious hiring of PSD members at a state agency.

This was in accordance with a judicial amendment enacted earlier this year, which changes the manner in which the panels are selected by removing the guaranteed panel chairman spot for a magistrate from the Supreme Court’s higher offices.

Supreme Court Chairman Cristina Tarcea initially held that the bill, which had no transitory norms, would be applied starting with the next selection of five-judge panels, in 2019. Following a constitutional conflict notification made by the Government on the matter, the Supreme Court was forced to re-select its panels.

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