No disciplinary proceedings to be initiated against judges of the Court of Appeals
18:06, September 14, 2016 | News, Own news | Lia MisakyanThe attorneys of doctors Lilit Vardanyan and Zarine Ayvazyan accused of the death of young Lia Misakyan, having missed the 1-month deadline to apply to the Court of Cassation, submitted a motion to the RA Court of Appeals requesting to consider that they missed the deadline for reasonable excuse.
Note that by the judgment of the General Jurisdiction Court of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun administrative districts of Yerevan city, RA, dated June 15, 2015, Lilit Vardanyan and Zarine Ayvazyan were sentenced to imprisonment of 2 years and 2 years and 6 months, respectively, without any additional penalty. At the same time, Para 4(1) of the amnesty act adopted for the 22nd anniversary of the RA independence was applied to the defendants and they were exempted from serving their sentences. And on December 22, 2015, the RA Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed the appeals of the representatives of the victim’s successor and the attorneys of the accused.
On March 26, 2016, the RA Court of Criminal Appeals, presided by judges M. Papoyan, A. Petrosyan and G. Melik-Sargsyan, having examined the attorneys’ motions on considering the excuse for missed deadline reasonable, dismissed them.
The RA Court of Criminal Appeals admitted and examined the appeal above in spite of the fact that it had no such competence since the functions of the RA Court of Appeals are limited to reviewing the rulings of the courts of general jurisdiction if there are any appeals. In this case, the judges of the RA Court of Criminal Appeals committed obvious and gross violations of the criminal procedural law, which serves as a basis for initiating against them disciplinary proceedings and imposing on them disciplinary sanctions, especially given that by this move the court discredited the whole judicial system.
It should be added that the aggrieved party, represented by victim’s successor Georgi Misakyan and his representative, Tatevik Siradeghyan, lawyer at Yerevan Office of HCA Vanadzor, were also summoned to the hearing by notification; the latter also objected to the motion. It is noteworthy that the ruling on dismissing the motion of the RA Court of Criminal Appeals contains not a single word on involving the aggrieved party in the court hearing.
Based on the aforementioned, on June 8, 2016, the victim’s successor and his representative filed an application with the Commission on Ethics and Disciplinary Issues of the RA General Assembly of Judges on initiating disciplinary proceedings against Mkhitar Papoyan, Ararat Petrosyan and Grisha Melik-Sargsyan, judges at the RA Court of Criminal Appeals.
The decree of the Commission of July 19, 2016, referring to Article 153 of the RA Judicial Code, states that “a judge shall be brought to disciplinary responsibility based on his/her obvious and gross violations of material and/or procedural norms committed maliciously or with gross negligence”.
At the same time, referring to Article 45 of the RA Law on Legal Acts, the Board details as follows: “If the application of a norm mentioned in a legal act is conditioned by terms separated by “and” [Armenian: “yev”] or “and” [Armenian: “ou”] conjunction [“yev” and “ou” are 2 different words in Armenian for “and”], all the terms listed for application of that provision shall be compulsory.” Therefore, according to the Board, for initiating disciplinary proceedings against a judge not only should there be a violation but also such a violation should be gross.
It should be added that the RA Ministry of Justice also expressed a position on the application pointing out that the application contained no obvious and grave violation of procedural norms and no prima facie grounds on any gross or systematic violations of the rules of conduct.