Let’s analyze the situation from a legal perspective.
The grounds for impeachment of a Member of Parliament are enshrined in Article 74, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, which states that Members of Parliament who have grossly violated the Constitution or broken their oath, or if a crime has been committed, may be removed from office or have their mandate as a Member of Parliament revoked by the Seimas with a 3/5 majority vote of all members. This is done through an impeachment procedure, which is established by the Statute of the Seimas.
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Article 228, Paragraph 2, Point 3 of the Statute of the Seimas stipulates that a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings is possible when it becomes clear that a crime has been committed (repeating the phrase used in the Constitution). In accordance with the first paragraph, a motion for the impeachment of a Member of Parliament can be initiated by a group of no less than 1/4 of the Members of Parliament (35 Members of Parliament).
Paragraph 8 of the same article stipulates that upon receipt by the Seimas of a copy of a final conviction, the Speaker of the Seimas or their deputy shall immediately inform the Members of the Seimas about it. Thereafter, the impeachment process proceeds in accordance with Articles 239-242 of this Statute.
Unfortunately, neither Article 74 of the Constitution nor the Statute of the Seimas answers the question that has arisen in recent days. Although a certain indirect answer is found in the eighth paragraph, which states that upon receipt of a copy of a final conviction, the Members of the Seimas are immediately informed about it and the impeachment process begins.
Article 336, Paragraph 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) stipulates that a judgment and ruling of the appellate court become final from the date of their pronouncement. Thus, when the Lithuanian Court of Appeal pronounced its judgment in R. Žemaitaitis’s case, it became final and enforceable from the date of pronouncement, regardless of whether it was appealed/not appealed in cassation to the Supreme Court of Lithuania. Therefore, upon the pronouncement of the judgment by the appellate court, all formal conditions for initiating impeachment proceedings were met. The possibility of filing a cassation appeal has no influence on the possibility of initiating impeachment proceedings, as the judgment, as already mentioned, becomes final from the moment of its pronouncement.
And what is the situation with the cassation process? Article 366, Paragraph 1 of the CCP stipulates that the Supreme Court of Lithuania hears cases in cassation regarding final judgments or rulings adopted by courts of first instance and appellate courts in appellate proceedings.
Article 370 of the CCP stipulates that a cassation appeal may be filed within three months from the date the judgment becomes final, and if this deadline was missed for important reasons, the court’s selection panel may reinstate it if the application is filed no later than within one year.
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Article 374, Paragraph 1 of the CCP provides for the possibility of suspending the execution of the appealed judgment for the duration of the cassation process. It should be noted that this is a right of the court, but by no means an obligation.
Thus, the cassation process is exceptional and very specific, as it only addresses the legality of already final court judgments, without examining the factual side of the case at all. The filing and acceptance of a cassation appeal in no way suspends the finality of the judgment, even if the court exercises its right to suspend the execution of the judgment. One of the reasons why the deadline for filing a cassation appeal is so long is precisely that the cassation process does not affect the finality of the judgment.
Furthermore, this process is also special in that by no means all cassation appeals filed are accepted by the court. The Supreme Court of Lithuania essentially accepts for consideration only those appeals whose examination is important for uniform judicial practice. The factual circumstances of the case are neither investigated nor evaluated in the cassation process, as the court only checks whether the law was correctly applied in the appealed judgment.
For the reasons stated, the initiation of the impeachment process for a Member of Parliament, as provided for in the Statute of the Seimas, is linked to the finality of the judgment, and not to the potential initiation of the cassation process, which, as already emphasized, has no influence on the finality of the judgment.
Opponents of this view may argue (and do argue) that it remains unclear what should be done in cases where, after a Member of Parliament has been removed through impeachment proceedings, the appealed judgment is overturned in cassation proceedings, and the removed Member of Parliament is fully acquitted. Indeed, the Statute of the Seimas does not provide an answer to this question. However, this problem can be solved quite easily by applying the rule of analogy of law.
In the specified case, the Seimas should simply annul its decision to remove the Member of Parliament through impeachment proceedings and restore the person’s status as a Member of Parliament. If such a “not directly written” decision is feared, there is an even simpler way to solve the problem – perhaps it would be worth simply supplementing the Statute of the Seimas.
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