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In a civil court, the
facts that were gathered and considered
as evidence by the judge, within the
limits fixed for a trial, are normally
not publicised, whereas in a penal court
they have to be stated publicly.
This morning's
session, which was no hearing,
happened to be open to the public
(reduced to 3 persons, me included, no
journalist) just because, due the
restructure of the juridical system that
occurred end of August, the judge
Maria
Emília de Melo e Castro
has been nominated to another section
and doesn't belong to this civil court
anymore, having therefore no office in
the Tribunal Civil de Lisboa. So she
needed a court room to release to the
lawyers the document she elaborated.
Only four lawyers were
present :
For the claimants, Dr Ricardo
Afonso (representing Dra Isabel Duarte)
For the defence,
Dr
Miguel Cruz Rodrigues,
Dra Fatima de Oliveira
Esteves, Dr Henrique Costa Pinto. Dr
Miguel Coroadinha (TVI) was absent.
The Judge asked the
lawyers to read the document in case
they needed clarification on some points
or had any objection, suggesting it
wasn't definitive. In fact it is on this
document that the lawyers who solicited
it at the last hearing (all of them)
will build their "allegations of law",
i.e indicate how they would interpret
the law on these topics. The judge left
the court room, leaving the lawyers at
their reading.
And so it happened.
A quarter of an hour
later, the judge entered the room
(through the witnesses', clerk's and
lawyers' entrance and not through the
judge's special entrance) and asked for
observations.
The only lawyer who
intervened was Dr Henrique Costa Pinto (Valentim
de Carvalho Multimedia).
He found some contradiction concerning
the green light given for the DVD’s
production. He underlined that he was
mentioning this issue informally. The
judge explained that she took various
sources into account and that
commercializing is one thing and selling
another. Therefore she thought it wasn't
contradictory, but admitted that without
the context it might let one think it
was.
The other issue was
related to the WOC issue. From this day
on, the claimants have 30 days to hand
over the London Court's authorization to
have Madeleine McCann represented by her
parents in this trial. Meanwhile the
trial is suspended. After the 30 days
delay, which of course can happen to be
shorter, the lawyers will have ten days
to hand in their "allegations of law".
When the judge left the room after
distributing the document to the
lawyers, as if the benches for the
public were empty, looking literally
through the three members of the public,
I entered the “sacred” area and asked
the clerk if I could read the document.
The clerk looked embarrassed, hesitated
but then said “no”, adding, as a
justification, that it was “informal”.
As there was no journalist neither in
the court room nor outside (only
photographers expecting the McCanns like
Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot),
as none of the defense lawyers would
have misled the Press Agency Lusa to
their disadvantage, the reader will need
no hypothetico-deductive method to find
out who grossly disinformed an
institution that still plays a decisive
part in the international circulation of
the news.
This note is obviously my
last contribution to the trial reports,
as the sentence will be notified to each
lawyer by mail.
Analyzing the terms of
the sentence is another chapter. |
