The accumulation of sentences: how it limits the total time of service
Someone has been convicted in different trials and at different times for different offences: five years in one process, three in another, two in a third. Without any correction mechanism, they would have to serve the ten years consecutively. But Spanish criminal law provides for a concept that can reduce that time: the accumulation of sentences. It is one of the most important mechanisms for someone convicted in several proceedings and, at the same time, one of the least known among those affected.
Its basis is in Article 76 of the Criminal Code, which establishes a maximum limit of service. The reason is to prevent the cumulative service of all the sentences, one after another, from leading to situations in which a person spends decades in prison, with the additional service losing its resocialising function. Accumulation is the procedure by which the court groups the sentences of different processes and applies the maximum limits to the whole.
Article 76 establishes two types of limits. The general limit is three times the most serious sentence: if the convictions are of four, three and two years, three times the most serious, that is, twelve years, sets the cap; if the total sum, nine years, is below that limit, the sum is served; if it exceeds it, only the limit is served. In addition, there are impassable absolute caps: as a general rule, twenty years' imprisonment; for especially serious offences, such as terrorism, it may be raised to twenty-five, thirty or forty years. These caps operate whatever the total sum of the convictions.
The most important requirement is temporal: for the sentences of different processes to be accumulated, the offences for which they were imposed must have been committed before the convicted person began to serve the first sentence. If they commit a new offence once service has begun, that conviction is not accumulable. The interpretation of this criterion has generated abundant case law of the Supreme Court.
Accumulation is not automatic: it must be requested by the convicted person or their lawyer. The court that handed down the most serious of the judgments to be accumulated is, as a general rule, competent. The request must be accompanied by the certifications of all the judgments and clearly set out why the requirements are met. It is advisable to act swiftly: the sooner it is resolved favourably, the sooner the convicted person benefits.
It is worth understanding that accumulation only produces real benefits when the total sum of the sentences exceeds the legal limits. If the sum does not exceed them, the time of service equals the sum of the convictions, whether or not accumulation is requested. When the sum does exceed the cap, for example with convictions of ten, eight and seven years that add up to twenty-five, accumulation reduces the service to the absolute limit of twenty years.
Once the court resolves favourably, the limit must be incorporated into the sentence calculation carried out by the penitentiary. If the calculation does not correctly reflect the result of the accumulation, the convicted person may challenge it before the prison supervision judge. Owing to the technical complexity of this matter, it is advisable to have a criminal lawyer who knows the applicable case law.
