The First Collegiate Tribunal of Santiago has declared the General Instruction of the Office of the Public Defender (ONDP) to be unconstitutional because it denies the assignment of lawyers to defendants who are considered to be economically solvent. The judge sent the case file of defendant Adriano Roman to the Public Defenders, who had refused to assign him a lawyer for his defense in the trial in which he is accused of criminal intent against Jordi Veras.
The sentence makes not of the dispositions in articles 6, 69, 176, and 177 of the Constitution, which establish, among other thing, that all persons and agencies that exercise public functions are subject to it (the Constitution), besides the fact that any law, decree, resolution, regulation or act contrary to the Constitution is null and void.
The General Instruction of the ONDP, signed by its director Laura Hernandez Roman, orders that service not be provided to persons who are solvent, which would be a violation of Article 5 of Law 277-04 that creates the National Service of Public Defense, which establishes that: “The National Council of the Public Defense will determine through regulation, the mechanisms, criteria and rates applicable to persons of confirmed economic solvency that are required or who have been provided the service.” This would also be in violations of articles 111 through 115 and 116 of the Penal Process Code regarding the rights of the defendant and the appointment of a defender.