They acquit a woman who had been sentenced to life in a trial without evidence

10/21/2020 10:30

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 10/21/2020 10:30

There were three days until the end of 2016 when Mr. T's body was found dead, stabbed, in his own house in the San Cristóbal neighborhood of Buenos Aires.

On that date, the ordeal of B also began, a woman who had been his partner in the past and whom

based on accounts of those close to T who said that she yelled at him and described her as violent.

The defendant stated that on the day of the crime she was in her own home with her family and then went to look for a sister who was admitted to a public hospital, with evidence from cell phone antennas and witnesses.

Neighbors of T commented that they saw him with another woman the night before.

However,

(on the assumption that it had been committed maliciously and against the person with whom she had been in a relationship) and sentenced to life imprisonment by a court of first instance.

After spending three years in jail,

Chamber accepted the appeal for cassation presented by the official public defender Marina Soberano.

Regarding the conviction handed down by the Oral Criminal Court No. 16 of the City of Buenos Aires, the Chamber affirmed that this ruling focused on “a subjective impression and

based on an inadmissible investment in the burden of proof ”.

Front of the Palace of Courts, Photos Emmanuel Fernandez

“She had denounced him three times for violence and had been able to leave that relationship.

but was a woman who reacted to gender-based violence.

But just as she did not fit the stereotypical profile of what a victim should be, she was condemned because of her personality ”, analyzes

, coordinator of the

.

"By not conforming to the prototype of the" ideal victim ", B was presented as violent and, consequently, became the main suspect in the fact under investigation," says the commission, which in her defense affirmed that B's account of innocence was always the same and that there was

.

“These gender biases operated to direct the investigation and the trial.

In this attempt to convict a woman, who in the eyes of the court is presented as not credible and aggressive, interpretations were forced, evidence was set aside and other possible investigative avenues were discarded, "adds Asensio.

The elements of evidence left aside to which B's defense refers are, for example, the fact that

and that T's cell phone was found by the police in the adjoining courtyard of the house of that woman, who also already had a criminal record and had been linked to a crime by stabbing.

"It is essential to be able to understand how

and that it is necessary to reinterpret the theory of crime from a gender perspective," says Asensio, "in this case, a woman who escaped the social mandates of what she should being a victim and reacting to her attacker, she

.

What the defense did was to show how certain actors of the Justice not only did not investigate, but they dedicated themselves to constructing their guilt ”.

Women charged in contexts of violence or vulnerability

Are the same behaviors of men and women evaluated differently?

What are the obligations of each sex in a given context?

¿

in the domestic space?

Are your responsibilities the same?

With the aim of rereading the law that considers the real experiences of women when dictating Justice, the publication

an investigative work that was carried out over three years and whose authors are Patricia Copello, Rita Segato, Raquel Asensio, Julieta Di Corletto and Cecilia González.

“

, that is, of seeing the world from the point of view of many women.

That capacity is essential when it comes to intervening in situations behind which there is a structure of enormous inequality, "said anthropologist

and stated:" For me it was a painful experience, in the sense that I visited places in the north of the country in which I encountered

.

In my report, I tried to give voice and to penetrate the voices to which we were exposed in the visits to the places and in the interviews with judicial operators of different levels, jurisdictions and specialties ”.

"From this research, it was concluded that

and that is why those who judge, consciously and sometimes unconsciously, continue to apply and reproduce certain gender discriminations," said the specialist in Criminal Law

.

Front of the Palace of Courts, Photos Emmanuel Fernández

Prepared as a manual that applies to the daily work of Justice agents, the publication focused on three groups of cases in which the presence of prejudices and stereotypes is particularly intense.

One of these groups is the one that is related to

, such as the duties of protecting children.

The second group of cases is that of

for gender violence, and the third is that of

.

“The courts do not seem to measure the impact of extreme poverty on women who are heads of households, who have great care responsibilities and little possibilities of inserting themselves into an insufficiently formalized labor market.

This places them in

with respect to large organizations that recruit them to undertake actions related to drug trafficking or smuggling ”, denounces the investigation that is proposed as a tool that helps to incorporate the gender perspective into a a system that many times does not offer fair answers to so many women who today find themselves in conflict with criminal law.

Free legal sponsorship of cases of gender violence from the General Defender of the Nation: (011) -5070-3214.

E-mail address: sponsorshipjuridico@mpd.gov.ar Commission on Gender Issues of the General Defender of the Nation: (011) 5070-3216.

Email: comisiondegenero@mpd.gov.ar

ME