89
313. There still exists an additional controversy between the parties as to the way in
which the Attorney General’s Office had to proceed in relation to the complaints containing
several facts that would constitute publicly as well as privately actionable crimes.
314. The representatives asserted that “all the complaints lodged with the Attorney
General’s Office […] present facts of criminal relevance (publicly or privately actionable)
with solely criminal purpose, […] so that by virtue of the connection between both criminal
types presented in the complaint itself and in order to seek consistency within the
proceeding, the Attorney General’s Office has the obligation to investigate the commission
of such facts". The State, in addition, expressed that the investigations into the privately
actionable crimes should be conducted at the request of the aggrieved party; therefore “in
compliance with its obligation to conduct a serious investigation, it broke down the facts put
forward in the [public and private] accusation in order to effectively prompt the procedural
proceedings it is allowed to initiate according to the legal system, avoiding, in this way,
unsuccessful results".
315. The Venezuelan legislation establishes that in the case of related crimes, when one
of them is publicly actionable and the other is privately actionable, the case shall be heard
by a court competent to try the publicly actionable crime and the rules of ordinary
procedure shall govern307. Upon request of the interested party only, the court shall be able
to prosecute private actions.
In this case, the State would be obliged to adopt all the
necessary measures of evidence and conduct a diligent investigation.
316. The evidence on record suggests that, as of the first complaint lodged on January 31,
2002, subsequent complaints, containing a great number of different facts that occurred
between 2001 and 2005, were consolidated with such complaint. In addition, in several of
the facts reported there is no identity of victims or of persons suspected of having
committed a crime and these offenses were committed in different areas and on different
dates. Nevertheless, the Court notes that all the complaints relate to incidents that allegedly
affected reporters and employees of Globovisión. In fact, it spring from the evidence that
most of the cases related to the media, and not only to Globovisión, were assigned to the
same Public Prosecutor Office. On March 12, 2005, the 50° Plenipotentiary Public Prosecutor
Office ordered, after three years of the filing of the first complaint, "to organize the entire
proceedings received, considering the incidents and the people affected", by virtue of the
"complexity of the case and [...] the several complaints lodged”308.
317. In this sense, it is not up to the Tribunal to exercise substitutional jurisdiction in this
case to determine whether the facts reported as illicit acts were related or not, under the
rules of COPP and whether the consolidation of the facts denounced was appropriate or not.
It is neither for this Tribunal to establish whether by means of the breakdown mentioned by
the State, it was possible to come to a better or more effective result of the investigations.
Nevertheless, the Court notes that the judicial authorities did not decide on the validity or
applicability of the rules of ancillary proceedings, nor did them render a decision that would
clarify if the procedure initiated was the appropriate one (infra para. 321).
307
Section 75 of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure provides: “If any of the related crimes corresponds
to the competence of an ordinary court and other crimes to the competence of special courts, the case shall be
heard by the ordinary criminal court”. When a same person is responsible for the commission of a publicly
actionable crime and a crime prosecutable at the request of the aggrieved party, the case shall be heard by the
court competent to try the publicly actionable crime and the rules of ordinary procedure shall govern”. Basic Code
of Criminal Procedure, supra note 300, section 75.
308
Cf. Record of the 50° Plenipotentiary Public Prosecutor Attorney of March 12, 2005 (records of evidence,
volume XXX, page 7678; volume XXXII, pages 8185, 8262 and 8387).
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