Wrong Assessment of the Incidence or Non-Incidence of a Cause for Termination of the Criminal Trial – Ground for Quashing the Final Decision

Résumé

A recent decision of the Constitutional Court of Romania (Decision no. 50/2025) gives us the opportunity to make some considerations regarding the erroneous assessment, by the appeal court, of the incidence or non-incidence of a cause for termination of the criminal trial, as a reason for quashing a final criminal judgment. From this perspective, the present study addresses the issue of one of the cassation appeal cases provided for in the current Romanian Criminal Procedure Code, namely the case regarding the wrongful termination of the criminal trial.

In analyzing this issue, we start from some general assessments regarding the regulation of the extraordinary remedy of cassation appeal, continuing with the presentation of some aspects of the judicial practice of the High Court of Cassation and Justice of Romania regarding the interpretation and application of the provisions relating to the cassation case consisting in the wrongful termination of the criminal trial.

Highlighting the consequences of finding the unconstitutionality of the legislative solution that excludes the defendant's right to appeal in cassation in the event that the termination of the criminal trial was wrongly not ordered, the paper concludes with a concrete lex ferenda proposal to reformulate the legal text containing this solution.