Constitutional Court Puzzled by Violations Committed by Judge in Kocharyan Case: Vahe Grigoryan

The announcement from the Constitutional Court confirmed our assertion that there was no legal requirement for Judge D. Grigoryan to send the materials of the criminal case "Republic of Armenia vs. R. Kocharyan and Others" to the Constitutional Court along with the decision made by the court under his presidency on May 20, 2019. Vahe Grigoryan, a lawyer, wrote this on his Facebook page.

“Today, the statement released on May 27, 2019, by the staff of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Armenia (link in the comments) effectively confirmed our claims that:

1. No legal requirement existed for Judge D. Grigoryan to send the materials of the case "Republic of Armenia vs. R. Kocharyan and Others" to the Constitutional Court along with the decision made by the court on May 20, 2019. By this action, the court essentially sought to neutralize the right of the victims and the prosecution to appeal, as the appellate court cannot examine the appeals of the victims and the prosecutors without those case materials, which the Constitutional Court does not need to consider the petition.
2. Furthermore, up to this point, due to his established and unlawful inactivity, Judge D. Grigoryan has taken no steps to remedy his procedural violations (which have resulted in an illegal restriction of the procedural rights of the parties involved). Despite receiving detailed descriptions of the violations in the appellate petitions from both the victims and the prosecution, Judge D. Grigoryan has neither requested nor submitted the materials of this criminal case to the appellate court as required by law.

While confirming the aforementioned violations committed by Judge D. Grigoryan in this case, the Constitutional Court staff did not address the question of what consequences may arise from the acceptance of this case by the Constitutional Court based on a decision/request that violates several material and procedural rights. This is understandable, as the resolution of this issue pertains not to the staff of the Constitutional Court, but to the Constitutional Court itself.

The first evident conclusion from this statement is that even the staff of the Constitutional Court is perplexed by the violations committed by Judge D. Grigoryan. This should indeed become a topic of discussion within the ongoing discussions in the judicial authority.

In fact, the acceptance of the petition for review submitted by Judge D. Grigoryan would grossly violate the right of the victim party in this case to appeal that decision, representing a logical continuation of a procedural strategy by Judge D. Grigoryan that consistently infringes upon the rights of the victim party.

Moreover, the acceptance of the case for review based on the petition submitted by Judge D. Grigoryan renders the right of the victims and the prosecution to appeal that decision extremely illusory and ineffective, as what value does our right to appeal hold if we are already deprived of the expected outcome (the annulment of the decision to suspend the criminal case) by a procedural decision of the Constitutional Court?

In other words, this announcement from the staff of the Constitutional Court has, in reality, not provided (and could not provide) an answer to the fundamental question: whether the Constitutional Court will unlawfully intervene in this process by deciding to accept the case for review, or whether it will refrain from doing so based on Article 3 of the Constitution until the final decision resulting from the appeal of Judge D. Grigoryan's unlawful decision is reached,” Grigoryan stated in his post.