Marchena resigns to judge 1-O trial

Judge Manuel Marchena yesterday took the unprecedented step of resigning from his position as president of the General Council of the Judiciary in order to take control of the trial against the Catalan political prisoners. Marchena’s resignation brings the political prisoners back to square one: they will now be tried and sentenced by a conservative judge who thought up the charge of violent rebellion and not by the moderate Andrés Martínez Arrieta, who was to preside over the court in the event that Marchena was prevented from doing so in his capacity as Supreme Court president.

Marchena released a statement - dated November 19 but made public yesterday - defending his impartiality after being portrayed as a pawn in the service of the PP. “I have never perceived the exercising of the jurisdictional function as an instrument in the service of one or other political party to control the outcome of a criminal trial,” the statement read.

Contrary to the recent revelation by El Español that he was part of a WhatsApp group run by PP spokesperson to the Senate, Ignacio Cosidó, Marchena claims that his career as a judge has been “always presided over by independence as a presupposition of legitimacy.”

Marchena’s leap to prominence in the Supreme Court suffers from the anomaly of his being the first Supreme Court president to be appointed by the PP and the PSOE, when in theory the appointment was not theirs to make.

His resignation now raises serious doubts over the ruling for the 1-O trial: the very person in charge of admitting or rejecting evidence before making his leap to the Supreme Court will now judge the events, while knowing that Cosidó has presented him as the PP’s pawn controlling the ruling.