Unreasoned criminal judgment and unclear charges: appeal allowed and retrial ordered

In a case in which we provided legal assistance to a defendant and drafted the grounds of appeal, we obtained a successful appeal before the Iași Court of Appeal. The court set aside the trial judgment in full, including its criminal and civil rulings, and ordered a retrial from the beginning of the trial stage.

The case concerns two fundamental judicial duties: establishing exactly what is being tried and explaining the outcome through an independent assessment of the facts and evidence. A judgment may contain many pages without providing that assessment.

Why a retrial had already been ordered

The proceedings concerned several defendants and distinct allegations. In an earlier appeal, the Court had found that the defendants had been indicted and received sentences for offences that were not covered by orders formally instituting criminal proceedings against them. The indictment therefore included charges for which the necessary procedural act was missing.

This had been one of the reasons for setting aside the first judgment. The trial court had also failed to rule on other allegations, while its reasoning and operative part contradicted each other regarding sentencing.

On retrial, the court needed to establish the acts forming the subject of the proceedings against each defendant, taking into account the investigation documents, the decisions discontinuing parts of the case and the appellate court's directions. Resuming the case required clarification of those matters and a genuine examination of the remaining charges.

What happened at the hearing

In the grounds of appeal, we explained that, at a hearing during the retrial, the defendant had asked for time to retain a lawyer and prepare his defence because he did not understand which charges remained against him. The request and that uncertainty were recorded in the hearing order.

We challenged the fact that, at the same hearing, the court had changed the legal classification after hearing the prosecutor, without an effective discussion involving the defence. Our grounds of appeal highlighted that the hearing order recorded the change as being in accordance with the prosecutor's submissions, without specifying the new legal classification in its operative part.

The problem was not the expression itself, but the absence of information essential to the defence. The order needed to state what the court had decided about the charges, rather than merely referring to the prosecutor's submissions. Subsequently allowing time to retain a lawyer did not, by itself, clarify the subject of the trial.

In its own assessment, the Court of Appeal found that the trial court had asked the prosecutor to clarify which offences were covered by orders formally instituting criminal proceedings, but that no resulting judicial act had established the acts to be tried. The procedure for changing the legal classification was not applicable to resolving the problem identified, and the way it had been used had failed to clarify the charges.

The right to defend a case starts with understanding the accusation

Knowing the name of an offence is not enough to prepare a defence. A defendant must know the specific conduct alleged and its proposed legal classification in order to discuss the accusation with counsel, establish a procedural position and identify relevant evidence.

The Court held that the failure to establish the subject of the trial clearly had affected the duty to inform defendants under Article 374(2) of the Romanian Criminal Procedure Code and their ability to prepare an effective defence. The rights to be informed of the accusation and to have adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence are also protected by Article 6(3) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

A lengthy judgment is not necessarily a reasoned judgment

The judgment delivered after the retrial had another essential defect: it lacked concrete reasons for the decisions reached.

The Court found that the trial court had reproduced extensive passages from the previous judgment, which had already been set aside, and from the earlier appellate decision. What was missing was its own assessment of the facts, the supporting evidence and the reasons for its sentencing decisions. The ruling on the civil claims similarly lacked independent reasoning.

Referring to Article 403 of the Romanian Criminal Procedure Code, the Court of Appeal stressed the need for reasons grounded in the facts and evidence of the case. Reproducing previous documents and theoretical observations could not replace the judge's reasoning on the charges being determined.

Reasons allow a defendant to understand the outcome, counsel to challenge it specifically and the appellate court to assess whether it is lawful and supported by the evidence. Without that reasoning, judicial review lacks an essential foundation.

Why the deficiencies could not be cured on appeal

In this case, the Court considered that the deficiencies could not be remedied by conducting the entire assessment omitted by the trial court for the first time on appeal. If the facts, evidence and essential aspects of the accusation were first genuinely examined at that stage, the parties would lose a level of jurisdiction.

The Court grounded the decision to order a retrial in the right to a fair trial and the right to review by a higher court, with reference to Article 6 of the Convention and Article 2 of Protocol No. 7. Appellate review could not wholly replace the trial it was supposed to scrutinise.

This was not simply a matter of brief wording or an underdeveloped argument. It was the absence of a concrete examination of the merits of the charges, preventing effective review of the judgment.

The outcome: the judgment set aside in full and a fresh trial

The Iași Court of Appeal allowed the appeal of the defendant assisted by our practice, together with the appeals of the other defendants, and set aside the judgment in full, including its criminal and civil rulings.

By a final decision, the case was returned to the trial court for a retrial from the beginning of the trial stage. The Court required the charges against each defendant to be established clearly, in accordance with the directions given in the first appeal and the discontinuance decisions recorded in the indictment.

The result obtained was the removal of the judgment and a fresh trial under the conditions set by the appellate court. An effective defence requires precise knowledge of the accusation, while a judgment must explain how the facts, evidence and relevant arguments have been assessed. In this case, the failure to meet those requirements called for a retrial.