The Prosecutor's Office appeals Alves' acquittal for review by the Supreme Court.

The Prosecutor's Office has formally announced its intention to file an appeal against the ruling of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) last Friday Alves overturning his conviction for sexually assaulting a girl at the Sutton nightclub. In this appeal announcement process, the Prosecutor's Office has only notified the TSJC that it will file an appeal for the Supreme Court to review its ruling, and will submit a written statement outlining its arguments in the coming days. For now, the Prosecutor's Office has only provided the grounds for its appeal, but without specifying them.

On the one hand, the Public Prosecutor's Office will invoke the article of the Criminal Procedure Law, which provides that one of the grounds for an appeal is a "violation of a constitutional precept." The Prosecutor's Office will also base its arguments on another section of the same law, which in this case stipulates that an appeal may be filed when, given the facts declared proven in the ruling being appealed, "a substantive criminal precept or another legal norm of a similar nature that must be observed in the same has been violated." The Prosecutor's Office had already appealed the first ruling in this case, which sentenced Alves to four and a half years in prison, then for requesting that the High Court of Justice (TSJC) increase the sentence to nine years.



However, the Catalan court rejected both the prosecution's request and that of the private prosecution (which sought 12 years in prison) and, instead, upheld the defense's appeal in a ruling that acquitted the footballer..