The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed the sentence consisting of 15 years in prison imposed on three individuals accused of causing the death of a neighbor by lighting him on fire.
Such a decision is contained in sentence 593 written by Judge Maikel Moreno and validated by his colleagues from the Criminal Chamber, Carmen Marisela Castro and Elsa Gómez. The events discussed in the sentence occurred on February 17, 2023 at 8:30 pm in the Villa Victoria sector, street 2, Maturín municipality (Monagas).
At the aforementioned time, a group of neighbors broke into Juan Antonio Romero Lira’s home and accused him of having touched the private parts of a 7-year-old girl.
Among the group of neighbors who entered Romero Lira’s home was Zurima Thais Rodríguez Lunar, mother of the girl allegedly attacked in her private parts. Also in that group of neighbors were César Adrián Hernández, Yimmi José Urrieta Rodríguez, Yosmar Gabriel Chacón Brito, José Gregorio Anibal Díaz, a teenager and a subject nicknamed Noche de Luna.
These seven people beat Romero Lira and then took him out of the house to a nearby forest where they doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. The teenager in the group recorded with her cell phone and asked that a sheet be thrown over her so that it would catch fire faster.
Finally, the victim died as a result of a blunt force skull fracture, second and third degree burns on 100% of the body surface.
Five of these seven people were arrested and charged by the Public Ministry, whose representative, prosecutor Carlos Eduardo Campos Bolívar, later requested to open a trial. The trial was ordered on May 10, 2023 by the 5th Control Court of Monagas at the time of holding the preliminary hearing.
At that hearing, Zurima Thais Rodríguez Lunar, the mother of the 7-year-old girl allegedly touched by the murdered man, and Jimmy José Urrieta Rodríguez admitted their participation in the events, thus avoiding trial and receiving a sentence of 6 years and 8 months in prison.
For the other defendants (Adrián Hernández, José Gregorio Díaz and Yosmar Chacón) the trial was held between October 24, 2023 and July 29, 2024, the date on which the 2nd Trial Court of Monagas declared them guilty and handed down a sentence of 15 years and 4 months in prison for homicide qualified with arson by arson in the degree of complicity.
That sentence was ratified by the Monagas Court of Appeals on November 7, 2024 after declaring an appeal filed by the defense of the three accused inadmissible. For this reason, they went to the Criminal Chamber of the highest court in the country to try, through an appeal, to have the prison sentence imposed on them reversed.
The arguments
In the appeal filed before the Criminal Chamber of the TSJ, the defense lawyers of the accused Hernández, Díaz and Chacón denounce that the trial court did not say what each person did during the perpetration of the act that caused the death of José Antonio Romero Lira. “The fact of being in the place does not translate into wanting the act,” the lawyers say in one of their complaints.
When analyzing this approach, the magistrates considered that it “lacks conciseness and precision,” which prevents resolving a complaint with that level of opacity. For this and other reasons, the magistrates dismissed the appeal, and with that decision confirmed the sentence of 15 years, 4 months in prison against the three defendants.
