10/08/2020 3:17 PM
Clarín.com
Police
Updated 10/08/2020 3:54 PM
He was arrested in 2006. He was convicted in 2010. And in 2018 Amnesty International asked the Supreme Court in an open letter to resolve the case of Jorge Enrique González Nieva (58) "
immediately
".
The ruling of the highest court was known this Thursday: he
was acquitted
.
Jorge Enrique González Nieva waited
14 years, 2 months, and 14 days
for his case to be resolved.
All that time he was in prison.
According to the Judicial Information Center (CIJ), "
the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation,
unanimously
, acquitted Jorge Enrique González Nieva for the crimes of robbery with resulting homicide and carrying a weapon of war for which he had been sentenced to the penalty of 25 years in prison by the Oral Criminal Court No. 1 of the Morón Judicial Department
".
González Nieva was arrested for a crime during a
bank leak
that occurred on May 24, 2006. That day, Analía Aguerre (43) was killed by motorcycle jets in Merlo.
The criminals
killed her
at the door of her house with a shot in the chest when she arrived from the bank: she had gone with her husband and a cousin to withdraw $ 11,000 pesos from a loan to buy a car.
It was on July 19, 2006 that González Nieva, a taxi driver, was arrested for the woman's crime.
According to the complaint, they took him to the Merlo police station, beat him and
extorted money
so as not to incriminate him in the crime of Aguerre.
Jorge González Nieva had been sentenced to 25 years.
In 2010, González Nieva
was sentenced to 25 years
in prison.
But the sentence was not final since his case was part of a complaint for "
armed causes"
against prosecutor Alejandro Jons, suspended in 2017 after a jury.
Since then he has been in prison.
His sentence was appealed and he
had entered the Supreme Court in 2015
.
Three years later, Amnesty International requested that the highest court rule on the case in an open letter.
"
The highest Court understood that the sentence was handed down in disregard of the constitutional guarantees of due process, defense at trial and the presumption of innocence and that these shortcomings were not addressed by Chamber II of the Criminal Cassation Court and, later, by the Supreme Court of Justice of the province of Buenos Aires when confirming it
", reads the ruling that the Court communicated this Thursday,
five years after
it arrived.
The Court promptly questioned the value assigned "
to the identification by photographs of the accused by a witness who later could not recognize him personally
."
In addition, he criticized
that the negative result of the recognition of people in a parade
by all the witnesses of the event was not assessed.
And he pointed out that "
there was no forensic evidence that physically links González Nieva with the facts of the conviction, nor could his link with the persons identified as members of the gang
" who committed the crime be established.
It was also considered that both the defendant's discharges and the testimonial evidence produced in his favor that supported that, at the time of the events, Jorge González Nieva was in another place and, therefore, was outside his commission, "
were discarded with inadmissible arguments for being directly contrary to the fundamental guarantees of the presumption of innocence and defense in court
".
The Court also recalled that "
González Nieva declared before the sentencing judges that the police officer who led the investigation had demanded that he hand over his car 'taxi' and that his refusal had contributed to keeping him charged and detained
."
And he recalled that "
property of a co-defendant passed into the hands of this agent during the course of the investigation and that, at the time of the oral debate, the police officers who had a central role in the investigation of the case were detained and under arrest. process for different criminal acts
".
Therefore, the Supreme Court understood that the appealed sentence affected not only the principle of innocence but also the constitutional guarantees of defense in court and due process and concluded that it was necessary to
acquit the accused in this instance
in order to avoid a situation of lack of definition at odds with the right of defense and due process continued to expand over time.
AFG