Under the left anti-rape law, sentence reductions for rapists are justified. That is the final verdict from Spain’s Supreme Court, handed down on June 7th, regarding the recent slew of sentence reductions for convicted sexual assailants caused by the country’s short-lived but controversial sex crime legal reform.
Best known by its nickname, ‘Solo Sí es Sí’ (only yes is yes), the reform of the criminal code regarding sexual misconduct was passed last year, only to quickly undergo a reform of the reform that passed into law in May of this year.
The initial reform removed the crime of sexual abuse from the penal code to make it easier to legally define non-consensual sexual acts as assault, which is considered a worse offense. But it also lowered the minimum sentence for the crimes, resulting in sentence reductions for violent sexual assailants already convicted and, in some cases, their immediate release from prison, as the Spanish constitution provides that the most favourable version of laws be applied to prisoners.
Thousands of imprisoned convicts have asked to have their sentences reviewed, and so far, almost 1,000 sentences have been reduced, in approximately 100 cases leading to prisoners being released. The day after the Supreme Court’s pronouncement, another rapist had his 12-year sentence reduced by five years.
The law was the work of the Ministry of Equality, run by Irene Montero from the neo-communist party Unidos Podemos, the minority group in the socialist-led coalition government. Multiple experts had warned that the law would trigger sentence reductions, but Montero insisted on passing it as written by her ministry, and socialist President Pedro Sánchez acquiesced.
Attempting to justify the work of the Ministry of Equality, the Prosecutor’s Office argued that following a 1995 law, which established that, even if the sentences for a certain crime were lowered, those sentences that were still within the new frame prison minimums and maximums should not be reviewed. The Supreme Court ruled, however, that this rule does not apply in the context of the ‘’Solo Sí es Sí’ law.
Since last May the sentences of 1,079 sex offenders had been reduced as a result. Although the reform has already been revoked and the penalties have returned to how they were before, convicts sitting in prison during the months the ‘Solo Sí es Sí’ was in effect still stand to benefit from sentence reductions.
