The Trujillo prosecutor, Jennifer Ludeña Meléndez, who was in charge of supporting the accusation against Edwin Oviedo As the alleged perpetrator of two homicides, he confirmed that the court acquitted the businessman and other defendants because the investigation he received from the former Chiclayo prosecutor Juan Carrasco Millones was insufficient.
The Trujillo court found no evidence to sentence Oviedo to 52 years in prison because the Chiclayo prosecutor’s office, which was responsible for the forensic phase or investigation of the case, did not provide evidence that the businessman participated in the conspiracy that led to the murder of the Tumán cooperative workers, Percy Farro Witte and Manuel Rimarachín Cascos.
“The sentence has established that all the deficiencies that occurred in the trial were due to the lack of a proper investigation. Therefore, the court has also indicated that there is responsibility for this deficient investigation, which is why it ordered that copies of the sentence be sent to the control body of the (Public Prosecutor’s Office of) Chiclayo so that it can proceed (against former prosecutor Juan Carrasco),” Trujillo prosecutor Jennifer Ludeña explained to La República.
When asked by this newspaper about Oviedo’s acquittal, the former prosecutor of Chiclayo, Juan Carrasco, said that there was indeed evidence of the responsibility of the sugar businessman and his alleged accomplices, but that the Trujillo prosecutor’s office (Jennifer Ludeña) had not adequately defended the case known as “Los Wachiturros de Tumán.”
Prosecutor Ludeña rejected Carrasco’s statements.
A BADLY MADE CASE
“(Juan Carrasco) dares to make such conjectures when he was not even present at the hearing. As the prosecutor of Trujillo, I had to face that trial. I spent three to four months between Chiclayo and Trujillo to locate and bring all the witnesses who had offered themselves. However, for the collegiate court, the witnesses were not enough. We had to find an effective collaborator. We had to save several situations. (…) And all of that is not my fault. That has been the case since Chiclayo,” noted prosecutor Jennifer Ludeña, referring to former prosecutor Carrasco.
The Trujillo court also rejected the statements of effective collaborators that former prosecutor Juan Carrasco collected during the investigation stage, because he considered that the statements were not corroborated.
In this regard, Juan Carrasco told this newspaper that it was not true, that he had verified the information and reiterated that the Trujillo prosecutor’s office did not know how to defend the case against Oviedo.
Prosecutor Jennifer Ludeña deplored the statements made by former prosecutor Carrasco. She pointed out that during her time as a prosecutor, none of the cases she investigated and reported ended in acquittal. And that what happened in the case of Edwin Oviedo was something exceptional because she did not do the investigation but Juan Carrasco, who was responsible for the file on “Los Wachiturros de Tumán”.
“All my work as a prosecutor has been thorough. All my cases have ended with a conviction based on my own investigations. I have not had any acquittal, except in this case, unfortunately, and it is because I was not in charge of the investigation. For this reason, I have issued reports to the senior prosecutor Jorge Chávez Cotrina and to the Internal Control (of the Public Prosecutor’s Office) of Chiclayo (on the deficiencies in the investigation of former prosecutor Carrasco),” said prosecutor Ludeña.
AN INDEFENSIBLE ACCUSATION
“Prosecutor Carrasco cannot make such comments. As soon as I received the files (from the Chiclayo prosecutor’s office), I issued my reports indicating that the case had been split into four folders and I don’t know why. What has been seen is only the file on the homicide case, but there are others, for example, on real cover-up and other events. What was the point? Why separate a case that was stronger overall? He (Juan Carrasco) did that there (in Chiclayo). He made that decision,” said prosecutor Jennifer Ludeña.
The prosecutor described in detail how she found the files of the “Los Wachiturros de Tumán” case. She described what she discovered as regrettable, and that in that state it was not possible to sustain the accusation.
“I requested that the file of Los Wachiturros de Tumán be returned to me, referring to the accusation of criminal association. The accusation was incomplete, incoherent. That is how it was sent to me. I cannot support something that was truly shameful to me. I cannot assume that type of responsibility,” said prosecutor Ludeña.
