In one unanimous decision of his three judgesthe Third Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal of the National District announced yesterday its judgment 502-01-2024-SSEN-00164, with which he revoked the extinction criminal case of bribery for the purchase of eight airplanes Super Tucano in 2007, whose main defendant is the former Minister of Defense at that time.
The judges of the court determined that “there are no unjustified judicial delays that have ruined” the purpose of the criminal prosecution due to the expiration of the maximum duration of the processas concluded by the Fourth Collegiate Court of the National District in 2023, which is why it ordered this same court start the substantive judgment from scratch.
He court of appeal also clarified in his judgment “the distinction between the fixation of term legal and term “reasonable”, because the latter, according to the magistrates, who cited jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice, its calculation “in criminal matters it’s not solely and exclusively an exercise of mathematical calculation“.
The judges They refer to what is stipulated in the articles 44, paragraph 11 of the Criminal Procedure Code, on the causes of the extinction penal, and 148 of the same law, that the “maximum duration of all process is four years old” and whose “term It can only be extended for twelve months in case of judgment conviction, in order to allow the processing of appeals”.
More than eight years in courts
The case of the Tucano has been courts more than eight years, whose procedure began with the acts of requesting and imposing a measure of coercion against those charged, in August 2016. aircraft They were bought to pursue drug trafficking.
The judges Nancy María Joaquín Guzmán, acting president of the Third Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal of the National District; Daniel Julio Nolasco Olivo and Mariana Daneira García Castillo, members, made reference to resolution 1920, of 2003, of the Supreme Court of Justice, which establishes that to determine whether there has been rape to the term reasonable, the “complexity of the case, seriousness of the impossible penalty and the protected legal asset” must be taken into account, as well as “the conduct of the accused against the process“.
Another point that mentions that resolution is that the judges must take into account, to declare the end of criminal prosecution due to the expiration of the term reasonable, “the negligence or effectiveness of the authorities in carrying out the process” and a “global analysis of the procedure.”
By quoting verbatim resolution 1920, the Court maintains that: “Not everything process that exceeds the term maximum duration provided by law violates the guarantee of trial in a term reasonable, but only when the undue delay of the case is evident; since article 69 of our political Constitution guarantees timely justice and within a term reasonable, precisely understanding that the administration of justice must be free of unnecessary delays”.
The accused in the case
The accused of bribery by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Persecution of Public Administration (Pepca) are the former defense minister Pedro Rafael Peña Antonio, the colonel Carlos Piccini Núñez, former director of Special Projects of the Dominican Air Force (FAD); he businessman Daniel Aquino Hernández and the companies 4D Business Group and Magycor.
All of them are accused of having received 3.5 million dollars from the Brazilian Aeronautics Company (Embraer) in 2007, in order to be selected as a supplier of eight combat aircraft.
Reasons for the length process
The Court recounts the causes that have led to the record of the alleged bribes for the planes has extended for so long, among them that the Fourth Investigative Court of the National District, to hear about the preliminary hearing, made 26 adjournments. The first hearing was set for October 26, 2017, according to the gloss. He said most of the adjournments were at the request of the accused.
The preliminary hearing, with the reading of the accusation, began to be known on October 14, 2019, in which “22 recesses were held, after the suspension of the deadlines due to Covid-19, these recesses were motivated, some ex officio due to the lateness of the hour, others at the request of the defendants’ defense and others due to attendable matters of a diverse nature.”
“Vstart” and “rape to legal certainty”
The Third Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeal of the National District also described the judgment of the Fourth Collegiate Court as “a vice“and one”rape to legal certainty”, when basing its decision to extinction criminal case of the Tucanos, which had already ended since “the preliminary stage”, when the judges Previously they had already decided on the incident and rejected it.
“They also disrupt the judicial protection exercised by the Court of Appeal of the National District, who ordered the total celebration of a new judgment of a process which advantageously exceeded the term legal maximum’, since it is a cause of extinctionthe Court could declare it unofficially,” concluded the Third Criminal Chamber of the Court.
He added in this regard: “Assume the logic used by the court a-quo (the Fourth Collegiate Court), would entail admitting that seven judges of different hierarchical levels of the justice system, committed a judicial error, violating due process processthe judicial protection of term reasonable duration of process that concerns us.”
The Fourth Collegiate Court of the National District, composed of the judges Keila S. Pérez Santana, Elías Santini Perera and Arisleida Méndez Batista, was also the one who decided the extinction of the irregular purchase of land in the Los Tres Brazos sector, record which was also returned to him so that he could know him again.
Because in a first substantive trial, if Peña Antonio, Piccini Núñez and Aquino Hernández were acquitted again, this sentence could not be appealed to annul it, because it would acquire the res judicata irrevocably, explained the former judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, Hiroito Reyes. He cited that article 423 of the Procedural Code establishes this.
Prosecutor José Miguel Marmolejo hoped that in the next substantive trial on the Tucanos the accusation made by Pepca will be known and conclude, not with an incident, but with a conviction, “as society expects in cases of corruption.” “.
