It is that action exercised by the Public Ministry or by individuals (depending on the nature of the crime), to establish, through the pronouncement of the court, responsibility in an event considered a crime or fault.
The action is aimed at the application of material law by the judge.
The object is the application of a punitive claim.
To file a criminal action, it is not necessary that there be a fact, crime or not. The process is established precisely to verify whether the fact existed or not, and if it existed, it will be appropriate to establish whether or not it is a crime.
For The Romanist or Classical Thesis of Action. Currently, the postulate that "action is the same right (ius puniendi) on a war footing or the right to prosecute what is due is ruled out."
In view of the foregoing, many jurists use the term "criminal action", when simplifying a set of words that mean "procedural action aimed at or aimed at solving a criminal conflict".
Criminal Action Characters:
Autonomous: It is independent of material law.
Officiality - public nature: The exercise of the action is of the Public Power, except when it comes to crimes of private action.
Advertising: It can be exercised by public persons, when seeking to protect society as a whole; it is exercised in the interest of its members.
Irrevocability: The general rule is that once the criminal action has been promoted, there is no possibility of withdrawal. It can be interrupted, suspended or ceased, only and exclusively when expressly provided by law.
Indiscretionality: It must be exercised whenever the law requires it. You are not obliged to exercise criminal action except when you feel compelled and should be carried out based on the investigation carried out by the prosecutor, who has discretion, when you believe there are reasons to suspend, cease, etc., the process.
Indivisibility: The action is one and includes all those who have participated in the criminal act.
Uniqueness: No plurality or contest of holders of the action is allowed.
Principle of opportunity:
By this principle, the prosecuting and initiating body of the criminal action (Attorney General of the Nation) has the power to abstain from exercising the Criminal Action or filing the criminal case.
In other words, the Public bodies in charge of criminal prosecution are allowed to dispense with it and definitively close the case.
Imperative Circumstances of Criminal Action
The complaint is considered not filed and everything acted is annulled. If the accused are under arrest warrant or under pressure, immediate release is ordered.
It is any legal condition to be able to denounce a fact as a crime or it is any element indicated as indispensable for the exercise of criminal action.
Preliminary question
Means of technical defense of the accused that proceeds in the presence of an autonomous pre-existing act or act and that needs to be resolved extra-criminally, to just start a Criminal Process. While said act is resolved, the criminal action is provisionally filed
Exceptions
Means of defenses conferred on the accused to prevent (provisionally or definitively) the continuation of the Criminal Process.
The exceptions are referred to a procedural element and not to the constituent elements of the crime.
Classes of Exceptions
Nature of judgment: Dilatory Exception. It does not refer to the merits of the matter but to the form, it is interposed when the investigation is given a different substantiation than that provided in the Criminal Law.
Nature of Action: Preventive Exception. It attacks the merits of the matter and definitively prevents the prosecution of the Criminal Process, it is filed when the act does not constitute a crime or is not criminally prosecutable.
Thing Judged: Perennial Exception. It is filed when the investigated fact has already been the subject of a judicial decision or decision (National or foreign) in a Criminal Process, for the same facts and against the same person.
Amnesty: peremptory exception. it is filed when the defendant has been granted amnesty for the crime imputed to her. Amnesty is that act of sovereign power (Congress) by which criminal offenses, generally political-social, are forgotten.
Prescription: peremptory exception.- It is filed when the period indicated for the extinction of the right to exercise the criminal action or the prosecution thereof has elapsed, but not the penalty. It can be exercised ex officio but no longer as an exception but through Resolution.
