JOANA CIPRIANO - Aged 8 years - Figueira (Portugal)

ionline

23 October 2009

The Faro Court decision that condemned Gonçalo Amaral can only move into appeal after the members of the jury are paid

The eight jurors that were present during the process of Leonor Cipriano against Polícia Judiciária (PJ) agents have not been paid by the Court of Faro, which is delaying the appeals that were filed by the lawyers at the Appeals Court. An amount that exceeds 16 thousand euro has not been paid and is standing in the way of a decision from the Appeals Court, given that the appeals concerning applied sentences and acquittals cannot move from the first instance into the Appeals Court unless the eight members of the jury are paid. The law does not foresee any legal deadline for appeals to reach the Appeals Court.

Five appeals are at issue. One from the lawyer that represents former PJ inspector Gonçalo Amaral, who did not conform over the condemnation for false deposition. One from the representative of Leonor Cipriano, who did not agree with the acquittal of Leonel Marques, Paulo Cristóvão and Paulo Marques Bom. And a third appeal that was written by the lawyers who represent one of the Judiciária agents, António Cardoso, condemned over document forgery.

These three appeals are joined by two that were filed prior to the sentence and for which the PJ agents’ lawyers are responsible. One of the requests focuses on the Lawyers’ Order being made an assistant in the process – which the agent’s defence considers not to be one of the Orders’ purposes and says is at odds with its statutes. And the second one was filed because the defence considers it had a right to hear a statement from Marinho Pinto, the head of the Lawyers’ Order, which was refused because he was an assistant in the process, The defence called Marinho Pinto (given that as a journalist he published Leonor Cipriano’s photos in the “Expresso” newspaper) as a witness, but due to the fact that he made himself an assistant, the judge rejected his witness statement.

This is a total of five appeals that wait for delivery at the Appeals Court in Évora, in order to be evaluated. According to judicial sources that were contacted by i, the case may drag on for some time, given that the Judicial Court of Faro may not have enough financial resources for this year, in order to pay over 16 thousand euro that the jury is owed.

According to the Jurors’ Statute, “after the sentence is read in the first instance, compensation is attributed based on every day that the function was effectively exercised”. This means that each one of the jurors – four effectives and four substitutes – receives one account unit (102 euro) for each day of work. There were approximately 16 court sessions, three meetings of the jurors with the judges and one interview during selection phase, which sums 20 days of pay for each juror.

In this process, in which Leonor Cipriano accused the Judiciária inspectors of torture, it was the defence that requested a jury trial, although the use of jurors is uncommon in Portugal. According to statements made at that time, the defence lawyers wanted “for the people to judge the police agents”.

Less serious cases are tried by a judge.

More serious cases are tried by three judges, or exceptionally, by a jury.

Original Source: ionline, 23 October 2009

Translated by Astro: http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/10/leonor-cipriano-case-jurors-waiting-for.html

I have asked for and been given full permission to post this explanation by Astro - who lives and works in Portugal. I have made no amendment to her post. I hope that this helps our members to understand the current issues.

Astro has said that I can ask further questions on behalf of our members.

Please PM me or write on this thread if you have a query that you think Astro might be able to assist us with.

FACTS without further comment:

1. No sentence uttered by a Portuguese judge is valid until any pending appeals are evaluated and ruled upon.

2. Gonçalo Amaral was convicted of false testimony.

3. All the parties involved in this trial are filing appeals.

3. The jurors that served at the trial in Faro have to be paid by the Court of Faro.

4. The jurors have not been paid because the Court of Faro's yearly budget does not cover the amount of over 16 thousand euros anymore.

5. In Portugal, no appeals can be forwarded to the Appeals Court unless the members of the jury have been paid their fees.

Further accurate information can be found in the relevant legal documentation, like the Portuguese Penal Process Code, and relevant newspaper articles that have been translated and posted, for example here.

Information is widely available without the need for anyone's 'guidance'.

Thank you.

Original source: Astro, Maddie Case Files, Sat Oct 24, 2009 10:19 pm

Ionline

19 October 2009

by Augusto Freitas de Sousa

Leonor Cipriano’s lawyer confesses to having used “creepy” method

The Public Ministry in Portimão is surprised about Leonor Cipriano’s lawyer’s appeal in which he “admits to having violated basic rules”

Leonor Cipriano’s lawyer confessed that he obtained a statement from his client’s brother “based on absolutely forbidden methods”. In it, João Cipriano assumed that he had tried to sell his niece Joana.

This, at least, is the understanding of the Public Ministry in Portimão, after analysing, and refusing, the request from Marcos Aragão Correia for a revision of the sentence that was applied to Joana’s mother, who has been condemned to 16 years and eight months in prison over qualified homicide and concealment of a cadaver. It is now up to the process’ judge to decide whether or not he accepts the appeal. According to the Public Ministry’s decision, the jurist – in the document in which he requested the revision of the appeal – presented a confession from João Cipriano “that could be used as the basis for a movie scene”. In that written document, Aragão Correia confesses to having invented a story to fool Joana’s uncle: a police source allegedly told him that an inmate intended to murder Leonor’s brother.

A technique that he called a “bluff” and that allowed him to obtain a statement from Joana’s uncle, confessing to having tried to sell his niece. This confession led the Public Ministry to consider that the lawyer is violating the Lawyers’ Order’s statutes, which forbid “contacts with witnesses or other process parties with the purpose of instructing, influencing, or, by any other means, changing their deposition, thus damaging the discovery of the truth”. On the other hand, it suggests that “the activities that were undertaken by the lawyer” are communicated to the Order.

Among other explanations, the Public Ministry thus refers that the “new evidence” that is presented is not valid and adds that references to “false confessions that were extorted by the PJ team, which was responsible for the investigation, under brutal and cruel torture” and the allegation that ‘Gonçalo Amaral took his degree in criminal investigation in Guinea-Bissau, or an analogous country, or was fuelled by still unknown interests in the sense that truth would never be discovered’, do not contribute to the serenity, being completely alien to the appeal”, concluding that the process that accused the PJ’s agents has not reached a final decision yet.

The president of the Lawyers’ Order’s Faro District Counsel, Augusto Cabrita, told i that in this case of eventual violation of the Order’s statutes, it has to be established what Aragão Correia’s main address is, and in case it is in Madeira (there is a main and a secondary address), it will have to be the Lawyers’ Order in Madeira that open the process. And, in that case, this will be yet another process that the lawyer will suffer at that body in Madeira.

Original source: ionline, 19.10.2009

Transalted by Astro: http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/10/leonor-ciprianos-lawyer-confesses-to.html

Diário de Notícias

19.11.2009

by José Manuel Oliveira

Joana case returns to court

The Supreme Court of Justice has summoned the mother and an uncle of Joana Cipriano, who are serving a 16-year prison sentence over the co-authorship of the death and concealment of the body of the child, that disappeared on the night of the 12th of September 2004, from the village of Figueira (Portimão), where the family lived, for new hearings.

In a press release that was sent out yesterday, lawyer Marcos Aragão Correia, representing Leonor Cipriano, the mother of Joana (then aged eight), mentions that “the 5th section of the Supreme Court of Justice has started probatory diligences in order to establish the details of new facts that have been recounted by Joana Cipriano’s mother and essentially corroborated by the child’s own uncle (João Cipriano), by the mother of both, by the child’s stepfather, and by other independent witnesses, within the Extraordinary Sentence Appeal”.

According to the version that was presented by Marcos Aragão Correia to journalists on the 16th of January this year, at the door to the Court of Faro, where the trial of five Polícia Judiciária inspectors was taking place, three of them standing accused of the moral authorship of torture over Leonor Cipriano, she said she had been convinced by her brother to accept the sale of Joana to a couple in Spain, that was known to him. Nonetheless, the deal failed “because the money didn’t exist”.

DN tried to hear lawyer Marcos Aragão Correia, yesterday, but he kept himself out of reach.

source: Diário de Notícias, 19.11.2009

Translated by Astro:http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/11/joana-case-returns-to-court.html

Amaral to train with former “enemy”

23 November 2009 | Translated by Astro

Gonçalo Amaral’s patron was Leonor Cipriano’s defender until the trial of five PJ inspectors over torture on Joana’s mother. Now they are great friends

by Rute Coelho

Life’s irony: Gonçalo Amaral, who in court helped to condemn Joana’s mother over her daughter’s death, is going to train, from January onwards, at the Portimão office of João Grade dos Santos, Leonor Cipriano’s first lawyer.

On the other hand, João Grade stopped defending Leonor – who exchanged him for lawyer Marcos Aragão Correia – on the eve of the trial of the five PJ inspectors and former inspectors that stood accused by the Public Ministry of torture over Joana’s mother.

“Since the first moment of the Joana case, I never forgot that I was merely a lawyer playing my role, and Amaral was a policeman”, João Grade dos Santos told 24horas.

“Gonçalo contacted me to become his patron during the training, which is due to start in January. Given the fact that he resides in Portimão and I have an office there, I think he chose me for a practical reason”, he explains. “That would be the reason, otherwise he would have proposed to practise at the office of his lawyer, António Cabrita [head of the Faro District division of the Lawyer’s Order], with whom he has an excellent relationship”, the lawyer explains.

It’s been months since João Grade dos Santos and Gonçalo Amaral started regular contact. “We speak very often”, the patron says about the retired inspector. João Grade even believes that the former inspector who led the Joana case investigation “may have been the victim of an injustice in the process over torture against Leonor Cipriano”.

Gonçalo Amaral ended up being condemned, on the 22nd of May this year, to a penalty of one year and six months in prison, suspended for a similar period, over the crime of false deposition. He was acquitted of the crime of omission of denunciation. The former coordinator in the Joana case investigation has appealed the sentence.

“He knows more than a 20-year-old trainee”

According to the Laywers’ Order’s rules, the training starts at the Lawyers’ Order itself, for six months, and only then can the candidate start his practical experience at a lawyers’ office. It is always the candidate who must find a patron. The full training period lasts almost three years. Then, one still has to pass the Order’s exams to be accepted as a lawyer.

João Grade dos Santos believes in his new trainee’s abilities. “My instinct tells me that Gonçalo is going to be very good. He has a refined smell and a brilliant career at the Polícia Judiciária: he become a coordinator during the time when inspectors were still called agents”, he praises, considering that “with his experience, he already knows a lot more than a trainee in his early twenties”.

Criminal investigation gives experience. “I have no doubts that he will be very good in the penal law area”, he says. As for other areas, like civil or family law, the future “master” of pupil Amaral bets on the student’s ability to learn: “I will explain to him how a process works. He won’t know how to carry out a divorce or an evacuation action at the first attempt, but I believe he will learn quickly”. The patron and the trainee are from the same generation. João Grade dos Santos is aged 51, Amaral is 50.

He even gave him the book

Gonçalo Amaral offered his patron a copy of his book about the Maddie case, “The truth about the lie”. “I read his book and I was convinced, as I had been before, anyway, that it was not an abduction. But the book does not defame the McCanns, Gonçalo Amaral does not express his opinion in it, but an investigation thesis”, says João Grade. Long before they became friends, the lawyer refused to cooperate with Spanish detective agency Método 3, which, according to a special programme on SIC on the 12th of February, wanted to count on his help in the investigation due to the Amaral factor, which was common to the Maddie and Joana cases. Grade refused. Método 3 contacted Marcos Aragão Correia, who accepted.




source: 24Horas, 23.11.2009