Judge and lawyer “catch each other” in court during a drug trafficking trial. The late arrival of the legal counsel led to a report to the Bar Association which led to the dispute.
Complaint to the Bar Association, warning and threat of expulsion from the room for disobedience, use of dilatory maneuvers, were some incriminations made yesterday by the president of the Collective of Judges of the Court of Beja to the lawyer Elisabete RomĂŁo, during a drug trafficking trial.
Turn, she responded to the magistrate with accusations of bias, submission of refusal incident to the Court of Appeal of Évora (THREE), request to the court to suspend the trial and even though the courts' delays in making decisions cause lawyers to waste many hours, they cannot file a complaint against the judges, were some of the adjectives used by the causidic.
It was a very busy start to the judicial year at the Beja Court, motivated by Elisabete Romão’s delay, who traveled from Tavira, which caused the trial to begin almost an hour later. The president of the Collective of Judges did not mince words and in the first intervention the lawyer responded in kind.
In the exchange of words between judge and lawyer about the refusal to suspend the trial, the judge said: “you are warned”, with the lawyer asking if “you are going to send me out of the room ?", having received the answer: “if you don’t follow my orders”, concluded the judge, in a very tense environment.
When Lidador News (LN), Elisabete Romão said that “when we are the ones harmed, we cannot file a complaint against the judges and the year began with a complaint to the Order”, justifying that the request for exclusion from the Collective “was immediately sent to the TRE. Now we have to wait for the decision”, justified.
The lawyer again accused the judge of bias: “until the terms of the trial, cannot give a signal of his conviction of the defendants' guilt, whether you believe it or not. This prevents them from defending themselves.”, finished.
Teixeira Correia
(journalist)
