Carlos Antonio Vegas, the Spanish judge known for his Twitter activity, has in the end received good news. The judges' governing body, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), will not open any disciplinary action against him after the Catalan government denounced tweets in which he proposed sending the Pere Aragonès executive to prison and backed the idea of judges opposing any initiative by the Catalan government, "whether they were right or wrong." The judge conducting the disciplinary action in the CGPJ has decided to close the case against him, considering that the facts subject to the complaint "do not constitute any disciplinary fault".
Vegas wrote his tweets under cover of a pseudonym, with the handle of Randy Watson and the username @EstadoCharnego, and yet he did not hide his status as a judge. He was known on the Internet for his sexist comments as well as criticism of the PSOE-Podemos government, often in highly offensive language, and he also expressed opposition to the Catalan language immersion policy. "Catalan [language] can't be touched, but you fondle Catalan children while you get hard," was his reply to a tweet from ERC leader Oriol Junqueras, defending Catalonia's linguistic immersion policy. (The "you" in the Tweet is plural, and so the vulgar suggestion is directed at people in general rather than at Junqueras)
The CGPJ's hearing, which was only intended to explain the facts to the judicial council, was opened after the Spanish justice minister, Lourdes Ciuró, denounced tweets published by the judge. Later, a further complaint was added, the petition for recusal of the judge, accepted by the Catalan High Court, for his lack of impartiality in a case that affected journalist Pilar Rahola. When these allegations were made public, the judge closed public access to his account.
Under a pseudonym
It was precisely the fact that he had acted covering up his real name which was the argument used by the judicial spokesperson of the disciplinary action to rule out opening any case against the judge. "The judge published the tweets under a pseudonym and in a private account, so it can be presumed that he acted in a private capacity using a name that did not reveal, either directly or indirectly, his membership of the judicial profession," argues the response to the Spanish minister's complaint.
In addition, according to the judge spokesperson, the judge's tweets do not fall into the categories for which judges' freedom of expression is limited, as provided in Spain's Judicial Power Act (LOPJ). The categories affected are statements that imply the disclosure of secrets, serious confrontations with authorities in their area of activity, corrections to jurisdictional actions taken by other judicial professionals, or a lack of due consideration.
Translation of tweets by "Randy Watson":
"They're very funny, they play games with the professionalism of judges so that we treat them impartially, but when they don't like it they are totally hostile to judges. This isn't abuse of authority, it's reciprocity."
"Possibly it's time for we judges to reject any petition from the Catalan government, whether they're in the right or not."
Judicial ethics
The report to the CGPJ also states that the breaches of the principles of judicial ethics to which the minister appeals in her complaint fall outside those requiring disciplinary action and that this was agreed by the full CGPJ in December 2016 when they determined that "the hypothetical violations of the principles of judicial ethics have no disciplinary consequences as long as the conduct in question does not fit into any of the disciplinary infractions listed in the LOPJ."
With regard to the TSJC's statements on the challenge to the judge in officiating over Rahola's trial, the report admits that the tweets raise doubts about the appearance of impartiality. In this regard, it recalls that it is a very serious disciplinary offence to breach the duty to abstain in a court proceeding when there exists "manifest enmity" with a party.
However, it considers that the circumstances for the incident to constitute an offence did not occur at this point either, because the fact that a judge does not withdraw from such a case "does not in itself constitute a disciplinary offence", but rather, it is only an offence when the judge omits to abstain "knowing" there is reason to do so. "In the case analyzed, the judge denied having a feeling of enmity towards the complainant and there was no prior personal communication between the two," it says, adding that the recusal of the judge was finally accepted not because of signs of manifest enmity but "due to the damaging of the appearance of impartiality which the tweets caused."