The State Defense Council (CDE) highlighted the unanimous ruling handed down Thursday by the Sixth Chamber of the Santiago Appeals Court, which confirmed the sentence handed down in August of last year by Visiting Minister Guillermo de la Barra, who sentenced Raúl Escobar Poblete sentenced to 18 years in prison as the author of the murder of Senator Jaime Guzmán Errázuriz, which occurred in April 1991.
“The State Defense Council has been involved in this process since its inception and the sentence that has been released today ratifies the robust grounds presented by the body and the persistent effort made to obtain the conviction of all those who participated in the crime of the senator Jaime Guzmán”, stressed the CDE counselor who sponsors the cause, Daniel Martorell.
The Council has actively participated in each of the trials against the perpetrators and masterminds of the senator’s murder, obtaining the convictions of Mauricio Hernández Norambuena and Marcela Mardones, who are serving prison time in Chile; as well as Conrado Villanueva, to which is added that of the also convicted Ricardo Palma Salamanca, who obtained political asylum granted by France.
Particularly, in the process followed against Escobar Poblete, the consistency of the grounds and sustained actions of the CDE to support each of the resolutions adopted by the Visiting Minister were effective in obtaining his extradition from Mexico and maintaining firm the sentence handed down by him. in August of last year.
The Sixth Chamber of the appellate court – made up of Minister Alejandro Rivera, Minister Lidia Poza and Minister Sergio Padilla – shared the classification of the crime, the participation of the convicted person in the facts and the application of the sentence, considering the half prescription, embodied in the contested decision.
The resolution adds: “That, for the correct sanctioning exercise developed in the thirtieth reason, it should be added that in the presence of a punishment that contemplates two degrees of indivisible penalties and another of one divisible, the system for determining sanctions contained in Article 68 of the Penal Code, to which the first degree sentencer correctly adhered, by imposing the final sentence on the sentenced person in the maximum degree of prison, with whose opinion this Court agrees.”
“That, ultimately, the allegations made by the appellants in their briefs on pages 10,372 and 10,385, as well as the verbal formulations reproduced by the appellants and by the professionals who announced themselves confirming the ruling of the a quo, all made at the hearing of last Friday, March 31, they fail to distort what has been decided on the merits, with which this Court agrees, referring to the punishable act, the participation and the circumstances that had to be addressed for the recognition of the half prescription as minor and the definitive fixing of the sentence, which, in addition, is in accordance with the background of the process and the legislation applicable to the case”, he concludes.
