The High Judicial Council, during today’s hearing, has partially accepted the High Inspector of Justice request for disciplinary proceedings against Judge T.T., of the Elbasan Judicial District Court, for disciplinary violations committed while reviewing the request for sentence reduction of an incarcerated person sentenced to life imprisonment.
The High Judicial Council took the measure of suspension from duty for 3 months with the right to the minimum salary for the magistrate. The High Inspector of Justice had requested “dismissal” against judge T.T.
From the legal analysis of the facts collected during the disciplinary investigation against judge T.T., the High Inspector of Justice had concluded in the investigative report that actions/inactions committed by the judge were in violation of the law “On the rights and treatment of pre-trial detainees and convicts” as amended, which have brought as a direct consequence the unfair benefit of reducing the sentence to 720 days for the person sentenced to life imprisonment (A.G.), as well as damaging the integrity of the judge in particular and violating the public trust to justice.
According to the HIJ investigation, the judge, while reaching his decision, did not refer to the facts and documents, but clearly presented distorted facts and circumstances only to suit the fulfilment of formal legal requirements. In the judge analysis of the 4-year decision-making (2017-2021), with the object of reducing the sentence, the High Inspector of Justice concluded that the judge acted differently in making 155 other decisions, while respecting the formal legal criteria in 7 requests from people sentenced to “life imprisonment”.
At the end of the investigations, the High Inspector of Justice had concluded that the actions/inactions of the Judge T.T. constituted a very serious disciplinary violation, which discredit the position and figure of the judge during the exercise of his duties, and requested the High Judicial Council the “Dismissal from duties”, for the judge for disciplinary violations provided by article 102, paragraph 1, letters “dh” and article 102 paragraph 2, letters “b”, “c” of Law no. 96/2016 “On the status of judges and prosecutors in the Republic of Albania”.
