The ‘face to face’ meeting in criminal proceedings

Chronicle of a pre-trial detention foretold

Abstract

The criminal proceedings which take place in La Plata, Buenos Aires province, are carried out -with exceptions- without holding the hearings that the law mandates in order to provide opportunities for prosecutors and judges to meet face to face with the people that they will charge/judge later in court. Hence, since the beginnings of the investigations until the moment of the trial (oral or written one -‘shorten’-), judicial authorities make important decisions such as allowing an accused person to remain free until trial or, on the contrary, imposing pre-trial detention, without even a minimum of immediacy with those who will bear their serious decisions. Nevertheless, that despersonalizating inertia is exceptionally interrupted, as it happened in Cristian’s case, when a young man provisionally detained from La Plata’s city, managed to meet face to face with the judges and prosecutors of his case, and thanks to that, he regained his freedom. This paper narrates Cristian’s case, and it aims to be a reflection on the influence that, in criminal proceedings, has o can have the direct contact between prosecutors/judges and the people that are being acussed or judged.