The authority of the provinces to regulate the reasonable period of duration of criminal procedures, according to “Price” sentence

Abstract

In August 2021 the Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina sorted out and settled as constitutionality inaccurate a rule within the Criminal Code of Procedures of the province of Chubut which established that, if in a given time the Public Ministry does not produce a precise indictment, the accused citizen should be dismissed.

Accordingly, the general purpose of this paper is decide if in a Federal Country provinces are indeed entitled to regulate the legal guarantee of “reasonable time of procedures”, and to impose relevant sanctions if lack of fulfillment does take place.

Methodology used in this research belongs to dogmatic-legal type, and was based upon the study of national legal norms, together with prior decisions of the CSJN, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as national legal doctrine, all of these analyzed either in abstract and theoretically. Methods used in this research were of the inductive-deductive substance with historical-logical foundations; this paper was developed from the point of view of a qualitative approach, in a sort of essentially descriptive level.

Consequently, it is concluded that the phrase “reasonable time” lies in the central axis of any duly legal criminal process and must be based both in the N.C., and the Human Rights Treaties included therewith. That is why, in order for the said guarantees of duly procedural times to be firmly operative, consequences of the above mentioned neglect must no doubt be established in advance, with Criminal Procedures Codes fixing periods of expiration dates in every procedure, after which the public prosecutor loses his power to produce an indictment. Accordingly, article 282 CPPChu is fully constitutional and does not breach the faculties prescribed in article 75 paragraph 12 N.C.