CRIMINAL LAW

If a preliminary investigation is not discontinued by the public prosecutor’s office, it ends with the issuance of a penalty order or the filing of an indictment.

If the public prosecutor’s office decides to file charges, the competent criminal court then examines whether it will admit the charges and open the main proceedings. This involves examining the procedural requirements and the so-called probable cause. This is assumed if, on preliminary assessment, a subsequent conviction appears more likely than an acquittal.

The intermediate proceedings are the last possibility to avoid an oral main hearing and thus your obligation to appear at a court hearing.

At this stage of the proceedings, we can argue to the court that the main trial should not be opened due to a lack of sufficient suspicion of the crime and raise any legal or factual errors in the prosecution’s assessment of the case.

This requires a meticulous examination of the prosecution’s investigation; each piece of evidence must be critically examined and its significance in the overall structure of the indictment questioned.