What exactly is the court/charging/sentencing process here?

Once you are arrested, the police has to present you before the Fiscal ( prosecutor). Within the following 48 hours of your arrest, the prosecutor has to: 1) Present you before a Judge for an arraignment, or 2)Let you go.

The Judge then has to perform an Arraignment Hearing and check if your arrest is legal or if your rights have been violated: If the arraignment request has been made within the 48 hours time frame, If you have been tortured, if the police found drugs in your home but didn't have a warrant to get in, etc. If the arrest has been legal, then the judge checks if the case has enough grounds to go further into an investigation.

Then the individual will be arraigned and the prosecutor will be given the time requested for completing an investigation: 2, 3, 6 months or even a year for complex cases. The time granted depends on the requests made by the prosecutor and the person's attorney.

Most popular arraignment options are: Bail, Having to show up before the prosecutor's office(or other authority) periodically, Preventive Prison, Being banned from leaving the country. There is also other options, including home arrest and electronic bracelets but these are not that common.

The less serious dispositions can be combined, for instance, you can be ordered to pay bail AND to show up before the prosecutor or other authority weekly, every two weeks or monthy. There is also the posibilty of having none of the dispositions ordered agaisnt you: if the evidence is weak, if there is proof that you are a hardworking and honest member of the community and you have no previous records, etc.

Bail is paid at the "Banco Agricola"; If at the end of the investigation there is no grounds to go to a trial, the case is closed and you are given your money back. If the case goes to trial, you don't get your money back and the State gets to keep it. The "Fiscal" doesn't get a cut of the bail money(or at least is not supposed to).

Preventive Prison is not a sentence, it's a temporary measure or pre-trial disposition that is imposed when there is grounds to suspect that the individual has committed the crime and that he/she will try to escape from the city and not be present during trial.

"Prision" is a sentence that is given at the end of a trial when the person is found guilty.

Prision Preventiva can last for 3, 6 months or even a year( on complex cases) and it's carried out at a "Fortaleza", a regular fortress.

After the period for the investigation is over, the prosecutor has to: 1)Present a request for Preliminary Hearing 2)Ask for the case to be closed, 3)Request an aditional term in order to gather more evidence.

Once the Prosecutor has a case and has enough evidence, he will present a request for a Preliminary Hearing before a Juez de la Instruccion.

At the preliminary hearing, the parties present their claims and evidence to the judge to support their case, the evidence that they are going to present and the order in which each piece of evidence will be presented in trial.

The Judge then, hears the parties and decides to either dismiss the case or send the case to a trial and also which pieces of evidence will be valid or not.

This is basically what happens!

@Aguaita - are you sure about the state keeping the money when the case goes to trial? There are bails that are paid in cash (usually smaller amounts) or "por contrato" where an insurance company issues a bond for bail, the accused usually paying a 10% of the bond's face value. There is no physical money involved in that case. If the state kept money when case goes to trial, I guess no insurance company would want to be in that business ...
e.g.
Libertad bajo fianza para tres?acusados de hackear p?ginas institucionales - Hoy Digital
Rutinel seguir? preso por no firmar contrato fianza

Also about sentence execution, I have heard several people say that they count "days and nights" individually, e.g. if you get a 2 year prison sentence, you get counted 24 hours as two days, day and night, effectively reducing your prison sentence in half. I don't know if it is actually true, but I have heard MANY people saying it so I guess that it is.

rubio_higuey said:

@Aguaita - are you sure about the state keeping the money when the case goes to trial? There are bails that are paid in cash (usually smaller amounts) or "por contrato" where an insurance company issues a bond for bail, the accused usually paying a 10% of the bond's face value. There is no physical money involved in that case. If the state kept money when case goes to trial, I guess no insurance company would want to be in that business ...
e.g.
Libertad bajo fianza para tres*acusados de hackear p?ginas institucionales - Hoy Digital
Rutinel seguir? preso por no firmar contrato fianza

Click to expand...

If the bail money is ordered without an Insurance company, the state keeps the money when the person fails to show up in court or when the case goes to trial and the person is found guilty.
Even if an insurance company is involved, to my knowledge, it still has to pay a big cut to the State for taxes. The individual has to pay a "Prima" that is established by the insurance company, plus 16% of the total amount ordered. The "Prima" is non refundable.
If someone has recent personal experience on this, feel free to chime in!

rubio_higuey said:

Also about sentence execution, I have heard several people say that they count "days and nights" individually, e.g. if you get a 2 year prison sentence, you get counted 24 hours as two days, day and night, effectively reducing your prison sentence in half. I don't know if it is actually true, but I have heard MANY people saying it so I guess that it is.

Click to expand...

Never heard of that before!

Perhaps the confusion arises because inmates have the right to petition for their conditional release from prison once they have done half the time of the sentence. The release is not automatic though. It depends on good behavior and other factors.