Supreme Court asks to investigate magistrates who remain in their positions

The high court asked to investigate Julia Emma Garzón and Pedro Sanabria, who ended their terms four years ago, but continue to occupy their places in the Disciplinary Chamber of the Judiciary, an instance that ceased to exist in the law five years ago.

The Supreme Court of Justice ordered copies to the Prosecutor’s Office to specifically investigate the magistrates of the Superior Council of the Judiciary Julia Emma Garzón and Pedro Sanabria.

The Court’s request is legitimate, since the two former magistrates ended their terms more than four years ago, but they have not resigned from their positions. On the other hand, both, despite not being part of the high court, have made decisions regarding rulings.

In fact, this was the case recently with a guardianship involving assets of former paramilitaries known as Los Mellizos. The rapporteur for that ruling was Sanabria, who is serving 12 years in the Judiciary and ordered that the precautionary seizure measures decreed since 2015 be lifted on properties that Miguel Ángel Melchor Mejía, alias El Mellizo, had offered to be destined for reparation. of the victims of the paramilitary structure to which he belonged.

However, the registered owners of the properties (Jaime Albeiro Alí Alí and Saidy Habib) argued that they had obtained the assets in a lawful manner and initiated a long process, in which several instances maintained the precautionary measures until the case reached the hands of the Superior Council of the Judiciary

Ignoring everything ordered in the previous instances, Judge Sanabria ordered the cancellation of the precautionary measures. However, this Wednesday the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice spoke out about this case and took away any validity from that action, while sending copies to the Prosecutor’s Office so that, if it was considered pertinent, it could investigate the two magistrates who failed in this case, the well-known “eternal” magistrates.

In this case, the decision appears signed by four of the magistrates who make up the court, but two of them saved the vote. This means that it was voted favorably by two officials: Julia Emma Garzón and Pedro Sanabria, so that it did not even reach the minimum number of supporters and, therefore, did not acquire “the legal nature of the sentence. “The text sent to that Corporation does not constitute a judicial order, and from it, then, no order can be derived,” said the Court.

On the other hand, the Court also sharply questioned the legitimacy of Garzón and Sanabria to participate in judicial decisions. According to the high court “these are two individuals who, to date, do not exercise the position of magistrates of the Disciplinary Jurisdictional Chamber of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, whose participation in deliberation and voting on the presentation does not attend, nor can it attend, to the conformation of the deliberative and decision-making quorum of that judicial order, “he ruled.

Thus then, the Court concluded that Garzón and Sanabria “do not hold the status of magistrates” of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Judiciary and that the text related to the case of “Los Mellizos” is not a court ruling, but “a draft because it was not approved by the majority of the Corporation. Moreover, considering that that document was prepared by citizen Sanabria Buitrago, it cannot even be predicated that it is a draft judgment ”.