Revision. Admission in principle. Qualified murder. Change of legal classification. Non-application of unconstitutionality decision

DREPT PENAL ŞI PROCESUAL PENAL

Abstract

Revision is an extraordinary remedy, through which judicial errors committed with regard to the facts adopted by the final court decision concerned, caused by the lack of knowledge or non-anticipation by the court of circumstances on which the adoption of a decision in accordance with the law and the truth depends, can be eliminated.

In order to admit in principle the application for revision, it is not sufficient to indicate in the written application a case of revision from those provided for in Article 453 C. pr. pen., being imperative that the court carries out a series of specific checks or analyses, corresponding to the particularities of each case of revision.

As the Constitutional Court of Romania has ruled, the effects of an admission decision rendered by the constitutional court extend inter partes only ex nunc, because it is the revision that directly produces effects for the past, and not the decision to admit the Constitutional Court, the latter being only an instrument, a legal reason for the future reform of the judgments that were based on the provision declared unconstitutional.

As regards the cases settled before the publication of the Constitutional Court's decision and in which the notification of the Constitutional Court was not ordered with an exception having as object a provision of a law or ordinance declared unconstitutional, they represent a praeterite facta, since the case was final and irrevocably settled.