The Constitutional Court has been informed of the negligence in the judgment of the Riga Regional Court

Aivars Lembergs' application regarding the term of appeal that was accepted for consideration by the Constitutional Court (CC) lists, among other things, the inconsistencies, negligence and pure nonsense shown in the Riga Regional Court judgment of Lembergs criminal case.

This is the third CC case initiated after A. Lembergs' application. The application asks to assess the compliance of the norm of the Criminal Procedure Law regarding the terms for submission of an appeal with the right to a fair trial guaranteed in the first sentence of Section 92 of the Constitution. The document cites a lot of nonsense in the Lembergs judgment at first instance, the analysis, enumeration and explanation of which on appeal required considerable time, as an example for the need to set reasonable time limits for lodging an appeal.

Testimonies were ignored

The application to CC revealed that, for example, in the grounds of the Lembergs judgment, “the testimonies are incomplete, they are not quoted, the information on the facts contained therein is not indicated, the questions asked and answers from the witnesses are not indicated, the testimonies are not presented correctly in general. In addition, the court judgment lacks specific references to the case file, which makes it almost impossible to find the relevant evidence, or part of it, in the extremely voluminous criminal case file. In the specific case, the evidence referred to in the grounds of the judgment in the opinion of the submitter of the constitutional complaint also does not correspond to the evidence in the case materials, which must also be indicated in detail in the appeal.”

The complaint to CC explains that in the grounds of Lembergs criminal case, the detailed testimony provided by A. Lembergs himself has not been evaluated and analyzed. As emphasized by the applicant, this should be done by the court in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Law and case law.

In the complaint to CC, it is explained that in the above-mentioned judgment of the Riga Regional Court “the court has not indicated with what specific evidence the actual features of the criminal offenses Aivars Lembergs is accused of have been established; the judgment does not analyze the compliance of the established actual features with the features of the composition of criminal offenses provided for in Section 219, Paragraphs one and two of the Criminal Law - the object, the objective party, the subject and the subjective party. Even where the judgment contains a reference to specific evidence in the case, that reference is not followed by a court's conclusion as to which facts the court finds to be proven."

The applicant told CC that the judgment did not analyze the evidence obtained in the case from the point of view of its relevance, admissibility, reliability and sufficiency. Inadmissible, ineligible evidence was used to substantiate the judgment, as well as such evidence, the reliability of which there are doubts based on specific facts. For example, “referring to the testimony of witnesses, the court not only did not indicate what factual information was contained in the evidence but also did not indicate when such testimony was given and where it was in the case file, thus the testimonies do not comply with the requirements of Section 127(1) of the Criminal Procedure Law, are unidentifiable. The judgment does not analyze the version included in the testimony of Aivars Lembergs at all; the court has not assessed the contradictions caused by the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, has ignored the fact that the testimony of Aivars Lembergs will be confirmed by other evidence in the case, without mentioning in the judgment the reasons why the testimony of other persons is more reliable in such circumstances. The judgment does not eliminate the inconsistencies between the evidence."

The applicant emphasized to CC that the above example illustrates how difficult it can be for the defense to reasonably refute the allegations made in the judgment and argue that they are incorrect. The applicant has indicated that it takes much longer to adequately prepare the argument than the court allowed under the current law. In this case, a longer time was needed even despite the fact that three defenders and the submitter of the constitutional complaint, namely A. Lembergs, had worked on the preparation of the complaints.

No justification

In the application to CC, it was revealed that the panel of the Chamber of the Criminal Court of the Riga Regional Court wrote the proof in the judgment in a rather superficial way, for example, using the wording: “document confirms”, "this document proves (..), which is also confirmed by the testimony of the witness", "the documents confirm in general and in relation to each other." Thus, in order to argue and substantiate the incorrectness of the court's conclusion in the appeal, it is necessary for the defense to analyze the content of each specific document and evidence, which requires a reasonable time.

The complaint to CC also shows inconsistencies in the justification of the security measure. For example, in the abbreviated judgment, it was decided to impose detention on A. Lembergs, but the reasoning for that is provided only in the full judgment, where the court has indicated the following arguments: “Aivars Lembergs has deliberately delayed the trial; he has violated the security measure applied to him on the prohibition to perform the position of the Chairman of Ventspils City Council; Aivars Lembergs has an influence on Ventspils City Municipality officials; Aivars Lembergs has tried to influence both the facilitators of the process and the witnesses; he has an influence on certain officials in the KNAB, the Security Police, the State Revenue Service, the State Police, etc.

None of these allegations is substantiated by evidence, and the constitutional complainant does not agree with these allegations on the merits either. Therefore, in the appeals of Aivars Lembergs and his defense counsel, it was necessary to provide a detailed justification that Aivars Lembergs had not delayed the court proceedings, as well as to answer the other arguments mentioned by the court, refuting each of them. Such substantiation is basically included in the appeals of both the submitter of the constitutional complaint and the defense counsel Māris Grudulis. However, if there were more time to prepare appeals, it would probably be possible to trace the court's reasoning to specific evidence, which is not indicated in the grounds of the Riga Regional Court's Chamber of the Criminal Court ruling of February 22, 2021, regarding detention (paragraph 2705). As this was not possible, the appeals in this part focus on the fact that none of the allegations regarding detention specified in the judgment of the Riga Regional Court's Chamber of the Criminal Court is substantiated by evidence, they lack a motivated individual assessment and are insufficient to establish the grounds for detention.”

The method of writing the judgment

The complaint to CC specifically emphasizes a specific method of how the court worked: “In the descriptive part of the judgment of February 22, 2021, the Chamber of the Criminal Court of the Riga Regional Court has rewritten the state prosecution word for word. This is also emphasized in all appeals. The grounds of the judgment of the court, insofar as they relate to convictions, hardly analyze the arguments of the defense, the defense's versions of the events, the cause and effect. The arguments put forward in the defense speech have not been considered, but the views of the public prosecution have been copied in many places.

It does not take considerable time and resources to copy the public prosecution in the judgment, but they are necessary for the defense to refute it,”

emphasized the submission to the Constitutional Court.

The appeal of lawyers Māris Grudulis and Olga Hincenberga is 884 pages long, the appeal of lawyer Irina Kauke is 673 pages long, but the appeal of Aivars Lembergs himself is 239 pages long. And all that had to be done in 20 days. Lawyer M. Grudulis has also submitted 222 pages of appendices to the appeal.

As already written, the full judgment in the Lembergs case, which became available on June 22, 2021, is 1924 pages long.

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