Spanish judge has been fined and suspended for a year for allowing a man to spend 455 days in prison for a crime of which he was acquitted.
The Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia said in Wednesday's ruling that Judge Adelina Entrena was guilty of grave negligence.
Her case comes amid an uproar in Spain over a judicial system seen as overworked, underfunded and increasingly sloppy.
In the most glaring recent case, it emerged that a judge failed to execute a jailing order against a man convicted of sexually abusing his 5-year-old daughter, allowing him to remain free and allegedly commit more abuses. The man is now a suspect in the murder of another 5-year-old girl; the judge faces disciplinary action.
In the new instance of alleged negligence, defendant Jose Campoy stood trial in December 2005 on charges of purse-snatching and was in preventive detention when Entrena issued an acquittal several days later. But she neglected to notify the jail and it took 15 months for a clerk to detect the error.
Campoy had been notified by mail of his acquittal but has a long history of drug addiction and limited reading skills, the court ruling said.
Entrena blamed the oversight on a backlog of work and insufficient staffing at her courthouse in Motril in the southern province of Granada.
Spain's judicial woes were compounded recently by a strike of ministry workers seeking pay raises. This led to even more backlogs, delaying everything from marriages to trials, until the strike ended this week.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who is about to start a second term, has promised to make reform of the judicial branch one of his priorities.
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