¿Favorece a las Mujeres Víctimas la Exención del Deber de Declarar? Estado de la Cuestión en España

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to consider whether the exemption from the duty to declare that is contemplated in the Spanish legal system for some cases favors or, on the contrary, harms female victims. To do this, we will start from the hypothesis of committing crimes within family privacy, as it is particularly difficult to prove. We will combine, in our work, a logical-deductive methodology with an empirical-inductive one. The methodological procedures used will consist of a jurisprudential analysis of the most recent and relevant judicial pronouncements, a doctrinal examination of the matter and an analysis, necessary, of the set of current criminal procedural regulations. We will have to expose as results of our investigation how the evidentiary activity is notably complicated when the only witness to the facts invokes his right not to testify due to the aforementioned links. In this way, it is not only really complex to get the process to continue its course, but to allow the accused, in the legitimate exercise of his right to due process, to contradict said testimony.