During the month of May 2021, Senator Manuel José Ossandón (RN) filed a complaint against the then mayoral candidate for the Pirque commune, Martín Lecaros, after the latter pointed out that a parliamentarian’s vehicle had participated in the destruction of their campaign posters.
As reported ThirdThis caused Ossandón to file a complaint for the crime of serious insults. However, the justice established that the crime in question could not be proven, so it was dismissed in two instances.
It should be remembered that on April 17, 2021, Lecaros uploaded a video to his social networks defining “political bullying”. After indicating that it had been “a tremendously complex week”, he denounced that a group of people entered the houses of those who had their electoral propaganda and broke it with knives.
After reviewing the municipal chambers, where the attackers’ vehicles could be seen, Lecaros said that “the entire Hyundai brand vehicle, owned by the honorable senator Manuel José Ossandón Irarrázaval, strikes me.”
“I imagine that the senator is going to have a thousand excuses that will allow him to justify why a vehicle he owned traveled all over Pirque with a gang of criminals, entering people’s properties and destroying these posters,” he said.
In the complaint filed by Ossandón, he points out that “this is nothing more than a direct accusation made against me through videos made, sent and viralized, with the purpose of disqualifying and discrediting me on a political, ethical and moral level against the commune of Pirque, a commune in which I was raised and I continue to be a part of it”.
After the crossfire between the two, on August 6 of the same year, the parties were unable to reach an agreement on the lawsuit and Lecaros did not admit responsibility regarding the accusations of insults by Ossandón, so it was decided to go to trial.
In the statement to the court -according to the judgment of the Puente Alto Guarantee Court- it can be read that Ossandón stated that after the accusation “he had anger, anguish, which was carried out in front of the community, he reached the school environment of his children, affected the image before his family. It had effects, he felt anguish, grief, anger, for him, his community, his family and his capital is his honor and the image he has of himself”.
However, the court stated that “although it can be considered that the defendant was in a position to know that uploading these videos to his campaign’s social networks could affect the accused, from the statements it is not possible to determine that the objective of the defendant was to cause damage to his honor. The defendant himself reports that upon learning that one of the cars observed by the security cameras was one owned by Mr. Ossandón, he is surprised.”
The parliamentarian’s lawyer said that, despite the fact that the former candidate for mayor of Pirque knew about the rest of the vehicles, he did not publicly denounce them. The court determined that “because clearly hearing the name of a publicly known person is not the same as hearing the name of unknown persons, which justifies a different reaction.”
With that on the table, the Puente Alto Guarantee Court decided to acquit Martín Lecaros of the crime he was accused of.
This led Ossandón to seek to reverse -before the Court of Appeals of San Miguel-, the sentence of first instance. However, the court of appeals established that “it is not effective that the sentence suffers from insufficient argumentation or lacks it.”
“In effect, the ruling does not incur in any omission that should be criticized because it contains a clear and complete statement of the facts that were considered proven; it also contains the assessment of the different means of evidence provided and the qualification of the facts. , as can be deduced from the fifth and sixth considerations of the contested ruling,” they added.
According to the lawyer Francisco Armenakis, defense of Lecaros, there is a discrepancy in the testimony of Ossandón regarding the facts. This, since before the court, the senator maintained -according to the sentence- that “he has nothing to do with the facts, that he lent the car to a person who had a soup kitchen for poor people and that to date no was in his possession”, in addition to the fact that he was at home that day and had gone to bed early.
However, before the Local Police Court, Ossandón maintained that he was in the commune with his driver in the vehicle. According to Armenakis, during the trial “we made the senator see that now he says he was at home, but in the Local Police file he stated that he was inside the vehicle. There the senator said that the judge told him that since he was a parliamentarian and He could circulate through the streets in quarantine, since he had a safe-conduct declaring that he was with his driver and the matter was over.
The lawyer ruled that “this is complex, because he had previously indicated that he was at home. So, what he said in the Local Police Court does not fit the truth.” The defender explained that the necessary evidence is being compiled to determine if the difference in the story “configures or not eventually a crime.”
