Criminal defence lawyer in Villanueva de la Cañada

A summons as an investigado, an arrest or a complaint just laid have one thing in common: what is decided in the first few days shapes everything that follows. Making a statement without knowing what is in the file, signing the first thing put in front of you, or waiting to see what happens are the three most frequent ways of ruining a case that had a defence. We have conducted criminal defences in proceedings that have reached the Sala Segunda del Tribunal Supremo, the criminal division of the Spanish Supreme Court.

When it is worth calling a criminal lawyer

• You have been summoned to make a statement as an investigado in criminal proceedings.
• You have been arrested, or a relative has, and someone has to attend at the police station or at court.
• A complaint has been made against you and you still do not know exactly what for.
• You have received a conviction and want to appeal it.
• You are the victim of an offence and want to take part as acusación particular — the private prosecution a victim may bring alongside the public prosecutor.

Do not wait for the trial. A defence is built during the instrucción, the investigative stage conducted by the examining judge: at trial you can only defend what was prepared before.

What not to do before you speak to a lawyer

• Do not make a statement without having seen the file. You are entitled to know what is in the proceedings before you speak, and entitled not to speak at all. An improvised statement is evidence against you for the rest of the case.
• Do not discuss the matter in writing. Messages, emails and voice notes end up in the court file with remarkable frequency.
• Do not contact the other side to sort it out yourself. In certain offences that contact is, by itself, a further problem.
• Do not destroy or delete anything. Besides being useless, it makes your position worse.

How a criminal case is defended

1. The instrucción, which is where a case is won or lost

This is the stage in which the investigative steps are taken, expert evidence is requested and the facts you are going to be tried for are defined. Taking part here — proposing evidence, asking for steps that help the defence, arguing about how the facts are classified — is what decides the outcome. A case that reaches trial badly investigated almost always reaches it already lost.

2. The juicio oral, the trial itself

The written defence case, the evidence proposed and the strategy for cross-examination. What is in issue has already been fixed: that is why preparation counts for more than improvisation in the courtroom.

3. The appeal

A first-instance judgment may be appealed — to the Audiencia Provincial (the provincial court) or to the Tribunal Superior de Justicia (the high court of the region), depending on which court tried the case. The time limits are short, and the appeal has to be built on what appears in the court record and in the recording of the trial, not on what anyone remembers.

4. Casación before the Tribunal Supremo

Criminal casación — the final appeal to the Supreme Court on points of law — is rarely admitted and more rarely allowed. The grounds are breach of the law, procedural irregularity or infringement of fundamental rights, and it calls for technical work of a different kind from an ordinary appeal.

If you are the victim: the acusación particular

Taking part as acusación particular allows you to propose evidence, question witnesses, put your own classification on the facts and claim civil liability — the compensation — within the criminal proceedings themselves, rather than waiting on the view taken by the public prosecutor. If the harm is personal injury arising from an accident, your matter probably belongs on our separate site: accident compensation claims.