THE STATUTE OF LIMITATION FOR CRIMINAL LIABILITY – A FRESH DECISION OF THE ROMANIAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT THAT BLOWS UP THE CRIMINAL TRIALS

Abstract

A regulatory deficiency in the new Romanian Criminal Code, in what regarding the ways of interrupting the course of the general term for the statute of limitation of the criminal liability, determined, in June 2018, a decision of the Constitutional Court which clarified the situation. Surprisingly, after 4 years from the moment this decision has been issued, during which the jurisprudence has complied with, another Constitutional Court decision upon this subject was issued in May, 2022. The later decision blows up the entire judiciary because clarify its first decision, in the sense, it is not an interpretative one but shows that due to the legislator's passivity in amending the unconstitutional text from Article 155 of the Criminal Code within 45 days, in the criminal legislation in Romania, there was no provision regulating the interruption of the general term of the statute of limitation for criminal liability during this period, of June 26, 2018 - May 30, 2022, and accordingly, no longer have been a special term for the statute of limitation in Romanian criminal legislation. This decision of the CCR manages to stir up a real storm in the Romanian courtrooms because hundreds of criminal cases, many of them involving large damages or high-ranking accused people from politics or administration, have been closed or are about to be closed, based on the lex mitior principle.