CSM decision in the May 2 file: Judge Popoviciu will not be suspended from office / CSM rejected the request of the Judicial Inspection

Judge Ancuța Ioana Popoviciu will remain in office, the Section of Judges of the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM) decided on Wednesday after the Judicial Inspection requested her suspension from office.

The Judicial Inspection proposed to the CSM the suspension of the judge, who at the first term of the trial asked if Sebastian Olariu, one of the young people killed in the tragedy caused by Vlad Pascu, was in the courtroom.

• “Rejects the proposal made by the Judicial Inspection regarding the suspension from office of Mrs. Popoviciu Ioana Ancuța – judge in the Mangalia Court, as unfounded. No recourse”, the CSM decided.

If it had been suspended, the trial in which Vlad Pascu, the author of the May 2 tragedy, in which two young people lost their lives, would have been restarted from scratch.

Upon leaving the CSM, judge Popoviciu sat in front of journalists for 70 seconds without answering any questions

According to the images broadcast by Antena 3, upon leaving the CSM, judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu sat in front of the journalists for 70 seconds, but did not answer any questions and had no reaction. She refused to say why she did not study the file before entering the courtroom, why she chewed gum during the hearing, but also why she asked for the report of the young man who died in the accident, not knowing that he had died, or why did he ask if she was in the gym.

The Section for Judges of the CSM started debating on Wednesday, from 11:00 a.m., the request of the Judicial Inspection to suspend the judge from the May 2 accident file.

The decision could have been taken last Wednesday, but the Section for Judges in Disciplinary Matters of the Superior Council of the Magistracy postponed to April 24 the resolution of the Judicial Inspection’s proposal to suspend Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu from office. The Judicial Inspection announced, on March 16, that it sent the Superior Council of the Magistracy a proposal to suspend from the magistracy the judge Ioana Ancuţa Popoviciu, from the Mangalia Court.

“The judicial inspectors assessed that the continued exercise of the function by the judge could affect the impartial conduct of the 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 Judicial Inspection announced in February that it had filed a complaint ex officio and was checking the magistrate’s behavior in the courtroom. A new term in the trial of Vlad Pascu, the author of the accident on May 2, in which two young people died, was scheduled for April 18, but the lawyers of the victims’ families managed to obtain a postponement.

Who is the magistrate who judges the trial of Vlad Pascu

The trial of Vlad Pascu is being tried at the Mangalia Court by judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu. At the first term, when the adjournment was ordered, the judge asked if Sebastian Olariu, the boy killed in the accident, was also in the courtroom.

Sebastian Olariu’s father left the Mangalia 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)”.

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: “exercising the function with gross negligence” / “gross negligence exists when the judge or prosecutor negligently disregards, in a serious, unquestionable and inexcusable manner, the rules of substantive or procedural law” .

And the lawyers of the families of the victims of the May 2 accident requested a few weeks ago the recusal of judge Ioana Ancuța Popoviciu, but their request was rejected. Also, the prosecutors of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the Mangalia Court requested the Constanţa Court of Appeal to relocate the file, but this request was also rejected.

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