The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice rejected an appeal that sought to annul the 25-year prison sentence imposed on Leonard Ricardo Liendo Rivero, accused of sexual exploitation, among other crimes.
Such a decision is contained in sentence number 500 written by Judge Maikel Moreno and signed by his courtroom colleagues, Carmen Marisela Castro and Elsa Gómez.
The crimes for which Liendo Rivero was convicted occurred in La Guaira, in 2021, according to a complaint filed with the Cicpc by representatives of two victims. Karina Colina is one of the complainants, who reported to the scientific police that on 8/1/2021 at night, a person named Erika Liendo Yépez wrote to her 14-year-old daughter offering her five thousand dollars if she sent her photos and unclothed videos.
The teenager accepted and sent the photos. Erika Liendo then demanded that the teenager make a video call where she would stage sexual acts, in exchange for paying her $5,000. And that is when the teenager refuses and begins to be threatened by these people with whom the photos were going to be published on Facebook.
In view of this situation, the teenager became scared and told her mother (complainant) because she did not want to continue with what they were asking of her.
The trial
Due to these events, Leonard, 41, was captured and charged with the crimes of sexual exploitation, aggravated extortion in real competition of crimes in continuity and pornographic exhibition of children or adolescents with multiple victims, says the sentence.
Liendo Rivero’s trial took place between November 15, 2022 and April 18, 2023. On that date, the 1st Trial Court with Jurisdiction for Crimes of Violence against Women in the state of La Guaira issued a 25-year sentence. prison for Liendo Rivero, after finding him guilty of the crimes charged to him by the Public Ministry.
The conviction was ratified by the specialized Court of Appeals and, as a result, Liendo Rivero’s private lawyer filed an appeal before the Criminal Chamber of the TSJ where he denounces irregularities allegedly committed during the trial, for which he requested a new one be held. .
“That is to say, my client was accused and accused of three crimes and the Public Ministry did not promote or evacuate any evidence that demonstrates the participation or authorship of the accused in the accused crimes,” says the accused in his brief submitted to the Criminal Chamber.
The magistrates analyzed that single complaint and observed that it was aimed “at questioning the evidentiary assessment carried out by the court of first instance. These aspects are outside the jurisdiction of the appeal.”
The magistrates tell Liendo Rivero that he made an error in the substantiation of the complaint, since having raised it in a generalized way, “the Chamber does not understand the true intention contained therein, since it is not up to it to infer what the recurrent”.
Based on these reasoning, the Criminal Court dismissed the appeal filed by Liendo Rivero as “manifestly unfounded” and, consequently, the sentence imposed remained unscathed.
