La conformidad en el anteproyecto de ley de enjuiciamiento criminal de 2020: Reflexiones y materiales para su futura redefinición

Abstract

Since 1882, the Criminal Procedure Act regulates the so-called “conformity”, an institution by which the defendant can accept the most severe plea of the prosecutors, causing the immediate termination of the proceedings with a conviction without trial or evidence. Designed as a unilateral declaration by the defendant and his defence counsel, in the last thirty years “conformidad” has been one of the institutions of reference to simplify any criminal procedure and improve the efficiency of the Spanish criminal system, and its legislative and institutional empowerment has come from the decision to allow some modalities of plea bargaining. This strategy has been maximized in the last decade in drafts and proposals for the comprehensive modification of the Criminal Procedure Act, based on the mutual benefits that the system and its participants obtain with its extended use. In this paper we study reflectively and critically the regulation of the acceptances of pleas in the Preliminary Draft of the Criminal Procedure Act of 2020, providing comments, suggestions, and doctrinal and jurisprudential materials that may help in the final delineation of the model in the future Criminal Procedure Act.