Reasonable Congruence between Charges Pressed and those Proved at Trial in Criminal Procedure Matters in Colombia According to the Adversarial System Characteristics

The congruence principle in criminal proceedings is the factual and legal correlation between the conviction and the charge. In terms of the current Colombian Code of Criminal Procedure, this correlation must occur between the counts contained in the indictment and those in the conviction and between the crimes for which a sentence is requested and those in the conviction. The problem identified in the analysis of the congruence principle in the Colombian criminal procedure lies in the possible lack of adequacy between the legislation establishing this principle and the characteristics of the adopted adversarial criminal procedural system. Through basic legal research, the characteristics of the Colombian adversarial criminal procedural system and the Supreme Court of Justice are discussed and compared with countries such as Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, Germany, and Spain, identifying that the Spanish system applies to Colombia.