The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice annulled a dismissal measure that was issued in favor of two Cicpc officials accused of a double homicide. That decision is contained in ruling 579 written by Judge Carmen Marisela Castro and supported by her colleagues, Elsa Gómez and Maikel Moreno.
As a consequence of that decision, the magistrates ordered a repeat trial against detectives Carlos Augusto Hernández Delgado and Jesús Enrique Priori Ruiz, assigned to the Cicpc, Puerto Cabello subdelegation (Carabobo).
Precisely, the criminal acts for which the two detectives are being prosecuted occurred in the Santa Lucía neighborhood of the aforementioned Carabobo city on August 27, 2015. That day, Hernández and Priori were stationed on the main road when they saw two people approaching on a motorcycle. They shouted to stop, the motorcyclists stopped, got off and immediately the agents drew their firearms and shot at the occupants of the motorcycle, causing them to die on the spot. The deceased were identified as Ander José Herrera Regalado and Macio José Coiman Gallardo.
“Seconds later, more police officials from said organization appeared at the site and did not allow anyone to approach the sector, passing off the procedure as a procedure of the People’s Liberation Operation, simulating a police confrontation,” says the sentence of the Criminal Chamber.
The ballistics examination carried out on the detectives’ weapons showed that Hernández Delgado and Priori Ruiz each fired five times with their respective assigned weapons: Beretta and Glock.
10 years after that double murder occurred, the Public Ministry requested to prosecute the two Cicpc detectives. Indeed, on August 30, 2024, the prosecutors with Competence in Matters of Human Rights Protection, María José Pedroza Prieto and Yamiltet Delmira Páez Hernández, presented a formal accusation against Hernández Delgado and Priori Ruiz for the alleged commission of the crimes of co-authors in homicide qualified with treachery and co-authors in the crime of improper use of an organic weapon.
The opposition.
This trial request presented by the Public Ministry was opposed by the lawyers of detective Hernández Delgado, Rebeca Delgado and Ruwuisela González Rojas, as well as Gleny del Valle Liendo, 4th public defender in Ordinary Criminal Matters, assigned to agent Priori Ruiz. Both legal teams requested a dismissal for the detectives since the facts investigated “are not criminal in nature”, according to the criteria set forth.
This approach was fully accepted by the 3rd Control Court of Carabobo, a court that rejected the accusation made by the Prosecutor’s Office because “it is clear with moderate clarity that the officials were certainly in the exercise of their functions where they discharged the deceased Ander Herrera and Macio Coima, and that their regulatory weapon, that is, the organic weapon, was used in this case.”
And consequently, the aforementioned court decreed the dismissal of the detectives’ open case, a request that their lawyers had raised.
That decision of the Carabobo court was made on October 1, 2024 and 3 days later, the 35th Prosecutor’s Office of Carabobo in Matters of Protection of Human Rights, requested “…the decision issued by that judge in which he decreed the definitive dismissal be motivated and substantiated; since once the proceedings were reviewed on this date, the reason for said decision does not appear in the order.”
The following month, specifically on November 7, 2024, Chamber Two of the Court of Ordinary Appeals and Criminal Responsibility of Adolescents of the Judicial Circuit of the state of Carabobo confirmed the dismissal issued in favor of the two Cicpc detectives.
Given this circumstance, on November 25, 2024, lawyer María José Pedroza Prieto, in her capacity as provisional prosecutor of the 35th Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Ministry of Carabobo, with Competence in Matters of Protection of Human Rights, filed an appeal to try to revive the trial against the detectives.
That appeal entered the Criminal Court on April 21. But before reviewing the appeal filed by the Prosecutor’s Office, the magistrates agreed to review the file in its entirety and verified “the existence of public order defects that violate the guarantees inherent to due process and effective judicial protection and, therefore, entails the absolute nullity of the actions carried out.”
The magistrates confirmed that the 3rd Control Court of Carabobo, Puerto Cabello extension, made an error in its ruling by decreeing a definitive dismissal in favor of the detectives.
Furthermore, said decision of the Carabobo court is full of contradictions, according to the magistrates because, on the one hand, it orders the Public Prosecutor’s Office to present a new accusation against the detectives and, on the other, it decrees the definitive dismissal of the case, the latter measure that closes the doors to debate the new approach that the Prosecutor’s Office would bring.
They order a new hearing
The immediate consequence of everything argued by the Criminal Chamber is the ex officio annulment of the sentence handed down on October 1, 2024 by the 3rd Control Court of the Carabobo state, Puerto Cabello extension, which freed the two Cicpc detectives from a trial. Therefore, the magistrates ordered that another court in Carabobo agree to hold the preliminary hearing again to debate whether or not to open a trial against the two Cicpc detectives. Said hearing must be carried out “regardless of the defects set out here, ensuring the protection of their rights and constitutional guarantees,” says the ruling of the Criminal Chamber whose magistrates sent the file to the presidency of the Criminal Judicial Circuit of Carabobo.
