The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed the 30-year prison sentence imposed on Johana Danexi Zambrano Castro, who was found guilty of having killed her newborn daughter. Such a decision is contained in sentence 529 published this October 23, with the signatures of the three members of the Criminal Chamber: Carmen Marisela Castro (speaker), Elsa Gómez and Maikel Moreno.
The events occurred on September 20, 2022 in the El Cerrito neighborhood, Colinas Monagas street, house No. 5, Petare, Sucre municipality (Miranda). That day, at 1 pm, Johana was giving birth inside the house, a situation that alarmed the neighbors due to the mother’s screams. Given this, they notified their relatives who showed up at the house to address the reported situation.
At first, Johana told them that she aborted and threw the fetus in a container located on the stairs of Mezuca, a place where relatives go but find nothing.
Meanwhile, the woman was transferred to the Domingo Luciani Hospital, where she stressed to the doctor about the abortion and indicated that the fetus had been left at home. Johana’s mother returned to the house and got the fetus wrapped in a sheet and put in the washing machine.
Due to this fact, the Prosecutor’s Office 107 of Caracas requested to open a trial against Johana after considering that she was guilty of the crime of qualified homicide in the person of her descendant.
Such accusation was recorded on November 7, 2022 before the 35th Control Court of Caracas. That body held a hearing on December 13, 2022 to debate the Public Ministry’s approach. At that hearing, the judge asked Johana if she wanted to admit the facts and thus avoid the trial. The woman responded that she did not admit the facts and the court ordered her to go to trial, the ruling says.
The hearings to debate the eventual criminal responsibility of Johana Zambrano began on May 10, 2023 before the First Trial Court of Caracas and concluded on January 24, 2024, the day she was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison. The Judicial Women’s Orientation Internment (Inof), located in Los Teques (Miranda), was set as her place of confinement.
The appeal
That sentence was appealed on March 6 by Maximino Antonio Álvarez Rengifo, Johana’s private lawyer. The appeal was declared inadmissible by Chamber 6 of the Court of Appeals of Caracas, whose three judges ratified the maximum sentence against Johana Zambrano.
Another private lawyer for the woman, in that case Juan Urdaneta González, filed an appeal before the Criminal Court seeking to annul the sentence imposed on the filicidal mother.
In the appeal, the lawyer denounced the lack of motivation on the part of the Court of Appeals when analyzing the complaints raised. “Why is a logical and non-contradictory motivation necessary in the Judgment of the Court of Appeals?” asked the lawyer when reasoning his appeal.
When questioning the magistrates, the defender describes his client (Johana Zambrano) as a woman “mother of two girls with psychiatric problems and a history of drug use,” which is why the judges had to be certain: “If not Did you know you were pregnant, because you had blood spills that you thought were menstruation? “If the girl was born alive or had she died before expelling her?”
Ignorance or maneuver
The magistrates of the Criminal Chamber detected that Johana Zambrano’s lawyer intended to use the appeal for cassation so that the Supreme Court of Justice would reassess the facts already debated in the trial court that convicted the woman.
Those questions that the lawyer asked regarding whether or not the girl was dead at the time of birth were already resolved during the trial, recalled the magistrates of the Criminal Chamber, who reminded lawyer Urdaneta that the appeals of cassation are not to carry out that type of approaches.
The Chamber even rejected that appeal and confirmed the conviction because the lawyer’s complaint “is so insufficient that a clear understanding cannot be obtained.”
