AUDIO The moment when Judge Popoviciu calls out to Sebi, the young man killed by Vlad Pascu: “How? Has a victim died?”

On February 22, at the first term of Vlad Pascu’s trial, judge Ancuța Popoviciu asked if Sebastian Olariu, one of the two young men killed last summer on May 2, was present in the courtroom. Antena 3 broadcasted an audio recording from the courtroom with this moment. The section for judges in disciplinary matters of the CSM rejected, on Wednesday, unanimously, as unfounded the proposal of the Judicial Inspection to suspend the magistrate.

“Oliru Andrei Sebastian is present? How?”, says judge Popoviciu.

“It is one of the victims, who died,” a person in the courtroom can be heard answering the judge’s question.

“Did a victim die? Please don’t talk, I’m just attending to the parts on the list. Please don’t talk over the court”, says the judge.

The section for judges in disciplinary matters of the CSM rejected, on Wednesday, unanimously, as unfounded the proposal of the Judicial Inspection to suspend from office the judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu, who judges the case of Vlad Pascu, the driver who, being drugged, drove his car into two groups of eight young people on May 2, and two students died in August 2023.

On Wednesday, upon leaving the CSM, the judge remained for 70 seconds in front of the journalists who asked her questions, without answering or leaving, according to the images broadcast by Antena 3.

And the judge formulated a request for abstention in Vlad Pascu’s file, but this was definitively rejected, as unfounded, at the Mangalia Court.

The magistrate requested that she be transferred, either to the Constanța Court, or to the District 2 Court in the Capital.

The Judicial Inspection notified the CSM

The Judicial Inspection announced, on March 16, that it had sent a proposal to the Superior Council of the Magistracy to suspend judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu from the judiciary.

“Judicial inspectors have assessed that the continued exercise of the function by the judge could affect the impartial conduct of disciplinary procedures and would be likely to seriously damage the prestige of the judiciary”, it was stated in a press release of the Judicial Inspection.

The decision was taken after, at the first term, the judge asked if Sebastian Olariu, the boy killed in the accident, was also in the room.

Then, Sebastian Olariu’s father left the court crying, saying that the judge would have asked, in the courtroom, “where is Sebastian” and asked for the boy’s report: “I have never felt anything like this in my life, I have never seen such a judge. He wanted his bulletin (no – the bulletin of Sebastian Olariu, the boy who died in the accident)”. The Judicial Inspection then announced that it had self-referred to the case of the judge.

Who is the magistrate who judges the trial of Vlad Pascu

According to her CV, Ancuța Ioana Popoviciu graduated in 2006 from the Faculty of Legal Sciences of the University of Oradea, then pursued a master’s degree in Private Law. He became a judge in 2011, when he joined the Ineu Court (Arad County), where he worked until 2022. Since then, he has been a judge at the Mangalia Court.

In 2023, the judge was targeted by an action by the Judicial Inspection, being sanctioned with a warning by the Section for judges of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM), wrote Ziua de Constanța.

The judge was sanctioned for “exercising the position with serious negligence”, more precisely for the violation of art. 271 letter s) thesis II referred to art. 272 paragraph (2) of the law on the status of judges and prosecutors:

• “exercise of the function with serious negligence” / “there is serious negligence when the judge or prosecutor culpably disregards, in a serious, undoubted and inexcusable way, the rules of substantive or procedural law”.