The lawyer Carlos Salcedo, who defends Alexis Medina, the main implicated in the Pulpo case and who has been in preventive prison for a year, assured this Tuesday that the judicial process against his client is going to collapse.
“You can say that in this case the Public Ministry seems to have levels of evidentiary force, but I anticipate the following, the process will fall in relation to Alexis Medina Sánchez at least in the fundamental elements that the Public Ministry claims to have “Said the lawyer during an interview on the morning program Despierta con CDN, which is broadcast on CDN, channel 37.
In Salcedo’s opinion, there are a series of elements that will cause the Medina case to not prosper, among which he indicated that the prosecuting body has not complied with the principle of equality established in the criminal procedural regulations that the process is transparent and the parts thereof. (accuser and accused) are in the same conditions.
He said that, for example, they have asked the Public Ministry, as the norm mandates, to deliver the evidence they have collected and their results and that they have only been notified “things that make me laugh at a process, that is to say, simply gasebos to entertain the defense and that evident works against the principle of equality ”.
“This will ultimately lead to the dismissal of the file,” warned Salcedo, who recalled that at the beginning of the Odebrecht case, he also anticipated that the case was going to fall.
With this he referred to the fact that of the six defendants in that corruption case who reached a merits trial, only two were convicted and the other four acquitted, one of them is former senator Andrés Bautista, whom Salcedo defended.
“I can say that the defense is armored also when there are so many errors in the process, you remember Nelson very well that I spoke from the beginning of the Odebrecht case that this process was going to fall, did it or did it not? The principles of equality and transparency in the process were violated. Was the evidence that was there useful? ”Salcedo said in the interview conducted by journalists Nelson Rodríguez and Héctor Marte.
He assured that although there is evidence that seems to be conclusive, it has to go through the sieve of legality during the preliminary hearing, which will be known by Judge Deiby Timoteo Peguero, who will determine whether or not the case goes to trial on the merits.
“The screening of legality will be approached in a timely manner by us test by test, therefore do not see it as a decisive or conclusive test, nor that it will finally produce a conviction, that test will be subject to an individual anamnesis in each case and you will see ”, He expressed.
Regarding the collaboration that some defendants are offering to prosecutors, among them Francisco Pagán, former director of the Office of State Works Supervisory Engineers (OISOE), whom Salcedo initially defended, the renowned jurist said that each one behaves according to their own level of responsibility and their particular circumstances, but not necessarily a person who is delivering goods is thereby acknowledging their total connection with the facts.
Salcedo, when asked about how the Public Ministry is handling the issue of whistleblowers or collaborators, also said that the prosecuting body has operated in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code, which establishes a number of tools or alternatives to the solution of the conflict, which is called negotiated justice.
He explained that the previous agreements are intended to reduce the penalty or have a certain accommodation, but that these negotiations “have strengths and weaknesses.”
Salcedo concluded by saying that the media stigmatize people who are in judicial process as guilty without respecting the presumption of innocence.
“No one can stop a wave of public opinion created, manipulated, distorted and that means that although tomorrow we find a worthy solution that discharges a defendant, in any case the stamp of corruption remains marked for life,” he said.
“It is not that corruption is not persecuted and that we all try to ensure that impunity is persecuted… we personally have a fight against corruption, but there must be levels of guarantee in the processes so that a final sentence is finally legitimized, of otherwise we will be doing a disservice to the constitutional rule of law, “he added.
