Tovmasian and most of the other judges of the court came under strong government pressure to resign in 2019, with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accusing them of maintaining close ties to Armenia’s former government and impeding his “judicial reforms.” They did not bow to the pressure.
Tovmasian refused to quit even after being indicted in December 2019. Prosecutors said that he had unlawfully privatized an office in Yerevan and forced state notaries to rent other premises “de facto” belonging to him when serving as justice minister from 2010-2014.
Pashinian and his political team eventually succeeded in significantly changing the composition of the Constitutional Court through constitutional amendments controversially passed by the Armenian parliament in 2020.
The amendments called for the gradual resignation of seven of the court’s nine justices, who were at odds with Pashinian’s government. They also forced Tovmasian to quit as court chairman but remain a judge. Tovmasian, the ousted judges as well as the Armenian opposition insisted that the constitution was amended in breach of existing legal procedures.
Tovmasian spent more than five hours delivering his concluding remarks at the trial than began four and a half years ago. He implied that he was prosecuted for not obeying Pashinian’s orders.
“I insist that the criminal prosecution against me has been carried out in violation of the law,” he told a Yerevan court. “In particular, the criminal prosecution against me was basically carried out by the investigators long before I was formally charged.”
The trial prosecutors demanded last month a seven-year prison sentence for Tovmasian. They claimed that he wants to drag out the judicial proceedings until the statute of limitations for his alleged crimes expire in December. The presiding judge has since sought to accelerate and finish the trial.
One of the prosecutors has said that Tovmasian will have to leave the Constitutional Court even if he is convicted by the court but avoids imprisonment. The former chief justice has not commented on such a possibility.