The electronic criminal trial officially begins. The ministerial decree, signed by the Minister of Justice, has been published, Alfonso Bonafede, which allows the electronic filing of pleadings and requests for defense from the public prosecutor who has concluded the preliminary investigations.
Thanks to this provision, the office that made the request for the activation of the digital deposit will be able for the first time in Italy to receive, with legal value, electronically the memories and requests subsequent to the conclusion of the preliminary investigations and the lawyers will be able operate these deposits without further producing and depositing the paper. The first office to ask for activation was the Public Prosecutor of Naples.
The electronic filing of the documents, which is currently optional, will have legal value starting from next June 25th. The Telematic Criminal Process is an objective set by the legislator to maximize the functionality of the system and for some time the Ministry of Justice has been committed to creating the necessary infrastructures and to spreading the digital culture widespread, thanks also to the effort made by the staff of the judicial offices and of the Directorate General of Information and Automated Systems (Dgsia).
The diffusion throughout the territory of the pilot experience of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Naples, which Minister Bonafede thanks for his availability, with the subsequent decrees that will follow shortly and with the expansion of digitization to further sectors of the criminal procedure and trial , will represent the next steps of a now irreversible path.
"This is a fundamental step for the optimization of justice and for the compression of times. In our plans, a lawyer, from his office, will be able to carry out many of those actions for which he must first necessarily go to court. This is even more significant in view of the new phase of the Covid emergency"Commented Minister Bonafede.