The Superior Court of Justice of Navarra (TSJN) will not begin to deliberate on the possible reduction of the sentence for the members of the Pack of Pamplona until at least next September. The Supreme Court already established doctrine last June and endorsed the reductions in sentences for sexual offenders, but legal sources suggest that the TSJN has postponed until after the summer the review of the appeal of Ángel Boza, the first of the five convicted who seeks to benefit of the regulations.

The Provincial Court of Navarra convicted the members of the Pack for sexual abuse in 2018, but the Supreme Court corrected this ruling and raised the sentences to between nine and 15 years in prison for sexual assault. The controversy surrounding these sentences served as an impetus for the Government to carry out the law of the only yes is yes and, in July 2022, the Minister of Equality herself, Irene Montero, defended that this regulation allowed taking “a decisive step to respond to the historical debt of the State and the institutions” with victims like the one in Pamplona.

Barely a month later, in August 2022, El Confidencial announced that Boza's lawyer interpreted this legislative change in another way and was preparing an appeal to reduce his client's sentence.. The Ministry of Equality categorically denied this possibility and the Government delegate for Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, crossed out the information that warned of the risk as “propaganda by the defender of rapists”.. The law ended up coming into force in October 2022 and, according to the latest data from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), it has already led to 1,155 reductions and 117 releases of sexual offenders since then..

In the specific case of La Manada, Boza's lawyer asks that his sentence be reduced from 15 years to 13 years and nine months. The Provincial Court of Navarra rejected this request in February, concluding that the penalty “is equally susceptible to imposition in accordance with the new regulation of crimes against sexual freedom”, but after presenting a new appeal, the case has been left in the hands of the TSJN. Faced with the first attempt, the court will now have to apply the doctrine established by the Supreme.

Until the pronouncement of the high court, the judges had maintained, broadly speaking, two different interpretations regarding how the law of only yes is yes should be applied: on the one hand, those who considered that the sentence should be lowered when the one set by the new regulation was lower than in the previous regulation, and, on the other, those who defended that, if the penalty could continue to be imposed with the new law, it should not be lowered in any case.

The Prosecutor's Office and the Provincial Court of Navarra itself were inclined towards this last thesis, but the Supreme Court did so for the first. As it concluded in its judgments, the aforementioned argument that the penalty is “equally susceptible to imposition” is not enough to automatically reject the appeals, although at the same time it dropped another warning: “It cannot be appealed, in absolute terms and without more reasoning, to criteria of arithmetic proportionality”. Those are the new rules on which the TSJN will have to move and, whatever its decision regarding Boza, everything indicates that it will end up reaching the Supreme Court itself..

In case of achieving a reduction, this sentence would also open the door for the other four convicts of the Pack to benefit from the law of only yes, yes.. The regulations promoted by the Ministry of Equality have already been modified by a PSOE counter-reform that aggravates the punishment of part of the crimes, but it will only apply to attacks committed from April 29, when it came into force.. For all of the above, sentencing reviews will go ahead..