The start of electronic criminal trial it will change many things. From January 1st 2025, to be precise, when alternative methods of filing documents in criminal proceedings will no longer be available: it will be possible to formalize the production of documents by the defender only through the ministry portal, and they should no longer be Deposits via certified e-mail or in paper form are not permitted or required.
«With that switch, the particular condition in which lawyers who take on legal aid find themselves will also disappear», he explains the Cnf councilor Demetrio Rivellino, «i.e. the obligation to produce at the registry office the copy of the appeal notice already transmitted electronically, or to pay the copying fees, in exchange for the free payment granted, to this type of client, for the copies extracted from the file. A constraint supported by a sanction, imposed in the event of non-compliance, on the accused, with which the defender would be jointly and severally liable”.
The member of the highest forensic institution spoke about it a few hours after the meeting he had yesterday with the Cabinet of the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordioon the occasion of which, as a note from via Arenula explains, the reason for the rule was clarified, which will no longer have any reason to exist in a few months, when, in fact, the “complete” transition to electronic filing will make obsolete the contextual deliveries of photocopies of the documents to the chancelleries.
Among the singular circumstances there is also the origin of the question: the legitimacy of the sanction, inflicted jointly on the accused and on the lawyer, as mentioned (and potentially capable of being passed on exclusively to the latter, considering that the clients benefiting from the “free” legal aid would not be “attacked” by Equitalia justice in the context of recovery of the sanction) had been the subject of a ruling addressed, in via Arenula, by the president of the Court of Campobasso, of the same district, that is, of which the councilor Cnf Rivellino is an expression. «The president of the Court had in turn been requested by some colleagues from my Forum», explains the national councilor, «and so I was able to deal with the Cabinet of the Keeper of the Seals in full awareness of the discussions that had preceded the meeting. I repeat that these are sanctions which in practice one almost never encounters, also considering that they concern processes, such as those in which legal aid is recognised, in which access to and copying of documents from the file, for the accused, occurs as mentioned without charges. It is only on the appeal that the obligation to pay the rights rests.”
Yesterday the Ministry of Justice issued a statement in which it referred to the “clarification” with the National Forensic Council “on the topic of triple payment of the right to copy the appeal notice in case of failure to integrate it by the defendant’s lawyer. In the meeting in Via Arenula it was specified that, pending the complete implementation of the provisions regarding electronic criminal trials, this payment is also due for the parties admitted to free legal aid exclusively due to the sanctioning nature of the regulations in force. The ministerial arrangements have highlighted”, concluded the note, “that these are provisions which are entirely distinct from those which contemplate the free release of copies requested by parties eligible for legal aid”.
