The Criminal Chamber of the Court annulled the preliminary hearing where they ordered a trial against five officials of the Bolivarian National Police. Consequently, said trial, through which they were sentenced to 12 years in prison, was also annulled. Now a new preliminary hearing must be held to decide whether or not to order a new trial against the accused uniformed officers.
Such a decision is reflected in sentence 510 written by the president of the Criminal Chamber, Judge Elsa Gómez, and which received the support of the other members of that instance, Carmen Marisela Castro and Maikel Moreno Pérez.
The magistrates took advantage of the fact that this file came into their hands through an appeal in cassation where the defense of the five accused sought to reverse the sentence imposed. But before deciding whether or not to admit this appeal, the magistrates stopped to examine the actions taken against the police officers, identified as José Alexander Junior Coello Alfonzo, José Daniel Alvarado Bolívar, Carleni Tahis Tachan Segueri, Jesús Alexis Rondón Valderrey and Reniel José Franco Guzmán. All belonging to the now extinct group called the Special Actions Force (Faes).
These officials are accused of having raided a home on Cementerio Street, Maturín (Monagas) and taking the owner of the property and his son into custody. They were then released to look for $5,000 and thus leave them alone, according to the tax investigation.
The owner of the home was called by an official who warned him that if he did not have that amount of money as soon as possible, he would say goodbye to his son, the testimony says.
The file includes Santiago Alfonzo de la Osa, Fidel Alfonzo de la Osa and Diógenes Enrique Ramírez as victims, the ruling says.
The police officers were arrested and charged with aggravated kidnapping in the degree of co-authorship, improper use of an organic weapon, association, aggravated robbery and home invasion.
On October 11, 2021, the Third Control Court of Monagas held the preliminary hearing and agreed to put the police officers on trial for three of the five crimes charged, ruling out aggravated robbery and association.
In that same hearing, the court ratified the arrest warrant against two fugitive officials: Jhonthan Graterol and Luis Molina.
On July 22, 2022, the Fifth Trial Court of Monagas began the oral debate to determine the criminal responsibility of the accused. That trial concluded on April 13, 2023, sentencing them to 12 years, 6 months in prison for aggravated extortion, a crime that was not originally charged.
The cancellation. When carrying out an analysis of this prosecution, the magistrates detected “vices that directly impact aspects of constitutional order and jurisprudential criteria of the Criminal Cassation Chamber and the Constitutional Chamber, which were unnoticed during the development of the case.”
The description of these vices is compiled in a chapter of the Criminal Chamber’s ruling titled “Nullity of Office.” They warn that these defects committed by the Monagas courts (third control and fifth trial) are linked “above all, to values, principles, norms, rights and constitutional guarantees.”
One of those irregularities detected is the omission of the Third Control Court of Monagas to explain the reasons it had for dismissing two of the five crimes that the Public Ministry attributed to the police officials.
This explanation from the court is what the Criminal Chamber calls “founded order”, a writing that must contain the narrative, the motivation and the decisions pronounced at the preliminary hearing, at which time the accused officials were ordered to go to trial.
“Said order, which is different from the order opening a trial, has been instituted through the jurisprudence issued by this highest instance, as an obligation inherent to the duty of every judge to motivate his rulings, in order to guarantee that the defendants know the factual and legal reasons on which their decision was based, all of this in order to allow the necessary procedural order to allow the parties, when they consider it necessary, to exercise the resources contemplated in the law in favor of their rights and interests. ”, explained the magistrates.
In addition to this, the magistrates recalled that in Venezuela there is no trial in absentia, a principle that was violated by the Third Control Court of Monagas to review the names in the preliminary hearing of two police officials who had not been captured.
Indeed, the minutes of the preliminary hearing only include the signature of the accused Reinel Franco, José Cuello, José Alvarado, Jesús Rondón and Carleni Tachan, which makes evident the absence of Jhonthan Graterol López and Luis Eduardo Molina, the judges stressed. .
It is appropriate on this occasion to ratify that in relation to the Venezuelan criminal process there is a prohibition regarding the development of the trial in the absence of the accused, since it is a violation of the right of citizen Jhonthan Rafael Graterol.
The sins of the fifth. The magistrates also evaluated the performance of the Fifth Trial Court of Monagas, which they criticized for having admitted the change of criminal classification suggested by the Public Ministry against the accused, so that they were finally convicted of a single crime that was not charged: extortion. aggravated.
In this regard, the magistrates say that this Monaco court subverted the provisions of article 333 of the Organic Code of Criminal Procedure, by accepting as true and without any objection what was stated by the representative of the Public Ministry, “without taking into account that being the director of the process, it is up to you to evaluate and decide on the possible changes that may arise in the debate of the oral and public trial, specifically in the present case, with the change of legal classification.”
He also did not argue why he acquitted the police officers of aggravated robbery and association. For these reasons, the Chamber ordered that another control court hold a new preliminary hearing to decide whether to put the police officers on trial.
