Civil Party Lawyers Question the PTC's Reasoning and Drop the Ball on Proffering a Solid Reasoning for Why They Believe It Is the Case

The Civil Party Lawyers of the ECCC filed a motion requesting that the PTC re-consider the parameters it had set out for the nexus between the ECCC's Internal Rules (IRs) and the Cambodian Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). The Lawyers, inter alia, requested that the PTC re-consider its stipulation of the primacy of the IRs should there be a conflict between a provision of the CPC and an IR rule. This was, however, done without a contestation of the outcome of the decision which bears the impugned reasoning on the nexus between the two codes of procedure.

In their Observations, the Co-Prosecutors made an argument which pulls the rug from under the Civil Lawyers' argument by citing an irrefutable authority derived from international law, i.e. reconsideration can only be granted if one of the following conditions are present: (1) the request of reconsideration contains a material change of circumstance; (2) the request of reconsideration contains an argument that the decision was erroneous; (3) the request of reconsideration contains an argument that the decision has caused an injustice. This authority having been unrefuted by the Civil Lawyers has facilitated its expeditious acceptance by the PTC and merited only a short decision which arose out of the clarity of the authority cited by the Co-Prosecutors.
This case doubtless shows the lack of legal research undertaken by the Civil Lawyers and their inability to predict the Co-Prosecutors' rebuttal which in this case is textbook and therefore should have been easily predictable. These shortcomings of the Civil Party Lawyers are particularly unfortunate in this case due to the substance of their request being the perceived inadequacies of the quality of a legal reasoning produced by the PTC in a particular case. The irony of this circumstance perhaps need not be underscored.