The defense of Jonathan Andic has filed an appeal against the decision of the judge in Martorell to accept the prosecutor’s request to incorporate the central unit for missing persons of the Mossos d’Esquadra into the investigation of the death of Isak Andic, of which his son is accused. Lawyer Cristóbal Martell signed a document on June 18 warning that the technical operational analysis of the circumstantial evidence, which the prosecution wants to commission to the aforementioned unit, does not fit within this procedure and that the assessments they want to assign correspond exclusively to the judicial authority. He also asserts that what the prosecutor really intends is to commission an intelligence expert report, which also has no place in this case.
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This unit of the Mossos specialized in disappearances of a criminal nature entered the investigation phase of the death of the founder of Mango in May, led by the special prosecutor of the jury court, Teresa Yoldi. In a document, she requested the judge of Martorell, Raquel Nieto, to incorporate them so that, based on their experience in cases relying on circumstantial evidence, they could prepare a report in the form of a narrative with everything the investigators had gathered up to that point. The prosecutor knows this unit well because she worked with them on some cases that ended with convictions before a popular court. The bodies of Piedad Moya and Diego Vargas never appeared, but Yoldi secured convictions in both cases and relied in court on the reports narrated by Sergeant Pere Sánchez, head of the unit. And that is what the prosecutor seeks, to guarantee the presence of that sergeant in court, thinking of a hypothetical trial against Jonathan Andic. “It’s her safe bet, those police officers give her technical confidence,” says a source familiar with Teresa Yoldi’s work.
The judge agreed to the prosecutor’s request that Mossos not involved in the case prepare a “technical” report with the evidence
Cristóbal Martell in this latest appeal again points to what he understands as subjectivization by the police in the evaluation of evidence. This time his arguments focus on reminding that the evaluation of evidence is a judicial function that cannot be delegated to a police body.
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Martell warns that the prosecutor does not specify how the intervention of that Mossos unit should be carried out, nor what the specific object to be analyzed would be. In any case, he adds, it is not the responsibility of the judicial police to perform analyses of circumstantial elements because the assessments of evidence correspond “exclusively” to the judicial authority, which does not need “police assistance,” at least in this case for that analysis.
Here he draws on case law and Supreme Court magistrate Manuel Marchena, who in a 2021 ruling already warned that inviting the police to make legal assessments about facts constitutes a “functional overreach lacking any legal coverage.”
The evaluation of evidence, Martell reminds, corresponds to the Court, not to police officers no matter how expert they are in investigations based on circumstantial evidence and not direct proof. The lawyer again cites Marchena when he warns that including assessments about facts in police reports constitutes “a functional overreach that, no matter how widespread its practice, can never be accepted.” And he adds, also in Marchena’s own words, that “the investigating officer slipping in personal assessments about (…) the credibility of the complainant (or the accused, we add), exceeds the functional space that our system reserves for law enforcement agents.” Because the police, Martell insists, adopting once again the Supreme Court magistrate’s words, “must record facts, not personal assessments about credibility or contradictions.”
This document connects with the appeal he filed against the precautionary measures ordered in Jonathan Andic’s imprisonment order and which is pending resolution in the Barcelona Court of Appeal. The police assessments of the evidence constitute “extravagant reflections perfectly dispensable,” he adds.
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He ends by warning that what Teresa Yoldi really seeks is an intelligence expert report, a figure that Martell defines as “novel and of a hybrid nature,” which is not free from controversy due to the distorted use that some jurists believe has been made of it lately.
The defense lawyer recalls that there is some consensus to accept these intelligence expert reports, but in complex processes such as investigations into terrorism or organized crime, where very specific knowledge about the functioning of those criminal structures is sometimes necessary. But “the investigation of an accident resulting in death, provisionally classified as homicide (…), is far from being a complex process that requires for the evaluation of evidence (…) a police analyst.”
Finally, Martell cites a work by Constitutional Court magistrate Ramón Sáez Valcarcel precisely on intelligence expert reports in which he already warned that “against the partiality of the police stands as a constitutional value and professional duty the impartiality of the judge.”
While awaiting the judge’s decision on this appeal, all attention falls on the resolution of the appeal that Martell filed against the measures imposed by the judge in Jonathan Andic’s imprisonment order. The outcome of the ninth chamber, led by magistrate Andrés Salcedo Velasco, will be important because it will provide clues about the incriminatory validity that the court grants to the evidence collected by the Mossos and which both the prosecutor and the investigating judge have accepted in their various documents.
After the first round of testimonies at the Martorell courts, the other five witnesses proposed by the prosecutor remain to be summoned to testify. Three senior executives of Mango, including the CEO, Toni Ruiz, and two Mossos from the mountain unit who participated on December 14, 2024, in the rescue of Isak Andic’s body in Montserrat.
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