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Lucía Pérez case: after a scandalous conviction for drug sale, the second trial for the rape and crime of the young woman in Mar del Plata begins

2023-02-07T14:08:09.320Z


Lucía's death occurred on the morning of October 8, 2016. The defendants had only been convicted of drug sales.


The second trial of the two accused of raping and murdering the adolescent Lucía Pérez in the city of Mar del Plata in October 2016 begins this Tuesday and will last for at least two weeks, with the testimony of almost 50 witnesses.

The new oral debate will take place from 9 o'clock before the Oral Court in the Criminal 2 (TOC 2) of Mar del Plata, and

the defendants, Matías Farías (29) and Juan Pablo Offidani (47), will not be present

, since they will follow each hearing of remotely from their places of detention.

Offidani and Farías are accused of the crime of "sexual abuse with carnal access, aggravated by the supply of narcotics followed by death in an ideal competition with femicide."

Both will face this new trial, after the Buenos Aires Supreme Court confirmed a resolution of the provincial Court of Criminal Cassation, which

annulled the acquittal for the crimes of sexual abuse and femicide issued in 2018 in a first oral debate before TOC 1.

The trial will take place before a new court, made up of judges Gustavo Fissore, Alexis Simaz and Roberto Falcone, with the prosecution in charge of prosecutor Leandro Arévalo, head of the Functional Instruction Unit 7.

The lawyers Verónica Heredia and María Florencia Piermarini will intervene as a private individual, representing the parents of Lucía (16), Marta Montero and Guillermo Pérez, and her brother, Matías.

Offidani's private defense will be in charge of César Sivo and Romina Merino, and Farías will be assisted by the official defender Laura Solari.

The hearings will take place at the TOC 2 headquarters, on the sixth floor of the local courts, and

the trial is expected to last for at least two weeks

, with an estimated sentencing date of March 1.

Although more than 80 witnesses were initially expected to testify, the number was finally reduced to 49, as established in a preliminary hearing held days ago.

On the first day, the parties will present their guidelines and

the witness statement of the victim's parents is scheduled.


At the request of the defenses, neither of the two defendants will be present in the courtroom, who will follow the trial remotely: Farías, from the Florencia Varela Penal Unit, and Offidani, from the Batán Prison Warden.

The development of the trial will also be followed from another room located on the second floor of the courts, where relatives of the accused and the victim will be present, and representatives of 11 organizations and entities that intervene as Amicus Curiae in the case.

The opening and closing will also be broadcast via YouTube, as occurred in the oral debate on the crime of Fernando Báez Sosa, held in the city of Dolores.

For security reasons, it was also ordered that the vicinity of the local courts be fenced off, despite the request of the victim's relatives to allow groups that announced that they will mobilize to demand the conviction of the accused to approach the building.

Facing this new trial,

Lucía's mother asked that a conviction be issued "accordingly"

and that the young woman "can rest in peace", and assured that it is "the least that has to be achieved".

"It is painful to start everything again, so the least we have to achieve is that justice is done for Lucía, that she has her justice and that these people are detained accordingly and that they do no more harm to anyone. That is our expectation and I think it is normal for any family that asks for justice for their loved one," he said in dialogue with

Télam

.

During the first trial, held in November 2018,

Farías and Offidani were sentenced to eight years in prison by judges Facundo Gómez Urso, Pablo Viñas and Aldo Carnevale, but only for selling drugs

outside the school they attended. Lucia attended.

However, both were acquitted for the accusations of sexual abuse followed by death and femicide, but Chamber IV of the Buenos Aires Court of Cassation revoked both acquittals in August 2020, ordered the "nullity" of the first trial and ordered a new one to be held.

That resolution was confirmed a year later by the Provincial Court, despite the appeals filed by the defendants' defense.

In the first trial, a third accused in the case, Alejandro Maciel, who died in July 2020, had also been acquitted.

Offidani and Farías are being held for the sentence imposed for possession and sale of drugs near Lucía's school, and are also serving pretrial detention for the accusation in view of this new trial.

Offidani's defender questioned the holding of a second debate, and expressed "extreme concern", because he assured that "what has been installed in the various campaigns that have been carried out for quite some time does not correspond to what exists in the cause. nor with what the tests show".

"We are facing a second trial where there was already an acquittal for lack of crime, where a higher court annulled the ruling, in fact this trial is based on the same evidence as the previous one, not due to deficiencies in the analysis of the evidence, but rather because of the way it was written," Sivo told Télam.

Lucía's death occurred on the morning of October 8, 2016

, and according to the hypothesis of the Public Prosecutor's Office, the adolescent had met the two defendants a day before, when they approached through a friend from the School Average 3 from Mar del Plata to sell him a marijuana cigarette.

The next day, Farías summoned the girl to her home on 4800 Racedo Street, in the southern part of the city, where she would have been drugged and abused to death.

After the first trial,

judges Gómez Urso and Viñas were accused of "negligence

, breach of office duties and manifest partiality" by the Bicameral Commission of Procedure for the Prosecution of Magistrates of Buenos Aires.

Carnevale, for his part, resigned his position to retire

and thus avoid being subjected to a prosecution jury.

GL

look also

Why five life sentences and three secondary participations?, the keys to the sentence for the crime of Fernando Báez Sosa

Rugby players and "life imprisonment": a path of 50 years in prison that nobody knows how it ends

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-02-07

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