When may the Constitutional Court bench suspend an impeachment adjudication because a criminal case on the same grounds is running against the respondent?
General information · Not legal advice
Material to check
For this exercise, the practice file holds the petition for the impeachment adjudication naming the respondent, the papers showing that criminal proceedings are still running rather than finished, and any paper linking the grounds in the two sets of proceedings so the same-grounds condition can be tested.
These are types of material to look for, not evidence already verified by PRO SE.
Where readings differ
One reading treats suspension as the bench's own discretionary step: where a criminal proceeding against the respondent is under way on the same grounds as the impeachment petition, the bench may suspend the adjudication procedure, and the provision says may rather than must.
Another reading stresses the conditions the provision ties together: it reaches only an impeachment adjudication concerning a respondent, only while the criminal case is still running, and only where the grounds are the same, so a criminal case on different grounds or one already concluded gives no foothold for suspension under this provision.
Your judgment
When the grounds in the impeachment petition and the criminal case overlap only in part, what in the papers would show that they are the same grounds as the provision requires?
PRO SE does not make this decision or keep a case record on this public site.When to reconsider
We look at this again if the provision is amended to make suspension mandatory or to change the same-grounds condition, or if a Constitutional Court decision explains how identical the two sets of grounds must be.