Law of Venezuela

The legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Continental Law tradition. Venezuela was the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, doing so in 1863.

The basis for its public law is the 1999 Constitution. The 1999 Constitution made significant changes to the separation of powers. Instead of the usual three branches of government, the new Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has five:

The electoral branch is headed by the National Electoral Council (CNE) and is responsible for the independent oversight of all elections in the country, municipal, state, and federal. The citizens' branch is constituted by the (defensor del pueblo) (ombudsman or "defender of the people"), the Chief Public Prosecutor (fiscal general), and the comptroller general (contralor general). It is responsible for representing and defending the citizens in their dealings with powers of the Venezuelan state.

The judicial branch is headed by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, whose 32 justices ("magistrados") are elected by the National Assembly for a single 12-year term.

Until 1998 Venezuelan criminal law was governed by the Código de Enjuiciamiento Criminal of 1926. The 1926 procedures "followed many of the traditional rules of inquisitorial tradition", with the pretrial process substantially under the judge's control. At the initial sumario step a judge would direct the police investigation; and after apprehension by police, the judge had 72 hours to decide whether to keep suspects in detention. At the second plenario step the process became more adversarial and documents of process made available to the defendant, but the judge still had "wide discretion to pursue charges beyond those outlined in the accusation". The 1926 code was established by the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, and represented a substantial change from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century procedures, where Venezuela had jury trials and oral procedures in some states. Gómez standardised legal procedures and suppressed juries.

...
Wikipedia