The extraordinary visiting judge of the Concepción Court of Appeals, Carlos Aldana, issued an indictment against three former Carabineros officials for their responsibility in two homicides committed in the province of Arauco in 1973 and 1988, respectively.

According to the findings of the investigation conducted by Judge Aldana, the first case occurred in Contulmo on the night of October 5, 1973—with a curfew in effect—when a bus from the Boitano company was being towed by a tractor through the downtown streets of that commune after suffering a mechanical failure.

It was under these circumstances that, upon passing one block from the Carabineros station, the officials heard engine backfiring and interpreted it as an attack. The officer in charge, Lieutenant Julio Tutt Fuentes, ordered the personnel to go out into the street to confront the attack with their weapons, firing at the bus and ordering its occupants to get off the vehicle, only to take them to the police unit after searching them. “In that place, after placing them against the wall, Mario Alberto Pilgrin Roa, who was already wounded by gunfire, fell to the ground, where the Carabinero Vicente Zapata Curinao shot him, 'causing an abdominal wound that resulted in his death, leaving him lying on the floor without providing him with immediate assistance,'” the resolution details. In the resolution, Judge Aldana indicted Zapata Curinao as a co-author of the crime of simple homicide of Pilgrin Roa and issued an arrest warrant against him to the Homicide Brigade (BH) of the Investigative Police. Protest The other investigated event occurred around midnight on March 8, 1988, in the midst of a protest with barricades and bonfires taking place in the Javiera Carrera neighborhood, in the commune of Curanilahue. Roberto Eliecer Valdebenito Vira was at the scene “when personnel from the Fourth Precinct of that commune began to disperse the demonstration, a process in which Sergeant Reinaldo Enrique Fuentes Fuentes and Carabinero Jorge Ulises Cid Maldonado used their weapons, firing several shots (…) one of which struck Valdebenito Vira, causing a blunt craniocerebral wound, likely fired from a distance greater than 50 centimeters, which penetrated the postero-lateral region of the skull (…) As a result of the above, the wounded man was taken to the Curanilahue Hospital and subsequently transferred to the Concepción Hospital, where he died on March 10 of that same year,” the resolution maintains. In this case, Judge Aldana indicted Fuentes Fuentes and Cid Maldonado as co-authors of the crime of simple homicide of Roberto Eliecer Valdebenito Vira and issued arrest warrants against them to the BH of the Investigative Police.

Source: cronicadigital.cl, May 6, 2014

Supreme Court confirms ruling acquitting Carabineros who murdered a miner in 1988

The Supreme Court confirmed the acquittal issued in the first instance by Judge Carlos Aldana Fuentes who, in a ruling issued in July 2016, acquitted two former members of the Carabineros of their responsibility in the crime of homicide of Roberto Eliecer Valdebenito Vira, a 30-year-old miner from Concepción.

The crime was committed on March 9, 1988, in the city of Curanilahue by Carabineros from that city. In a unanimous ruling (case file 36.269-2017), the Second Chamber of the highest court—composed of judges Milton Juica, Carlos Künsemüller, Lamberto Cisternas, Manuel Antonio Valderrama, and acting lawyer Rodrigo Correa—rejected the appeal filed by the Human Rights Program against the sentence issued by the Concepción Court of Appeals in July 2017, which acquitted former Carabineros Reinaldo Fuentes Fuentes and Jorge Cid Maldonado, supposedly because it was not proven in the criminal process, which was investigated by visiting judge Carlos Aldana, who fired the shot that killed Valdebenito Vira. The deplorable ruling of the Supreme Court confirms the inoperability of the justice system, both of Aldana and the Concepción Court, in this and other cases, since it refused to convict those responsible for the crime under the simple pretext that Mr. Aldana did not form a moral conviction as to which of the two defendants fired the fatal shot; even though the evidence indicates otherwise, instead of convicting both, it is enough that Mr. Aldana does not form a moral certainty to exonerate criminals. What a justice system this is! That depends on the state of mind of one man. What a justice system this is, that cares more about respecting the "moral subjectivity" of an official than the rights to justice of the victim and their family.

The Supreme Court ruling states

«That, if the filed appeal is read carefully, it starts from the argumentative basis that one of the shots fired, either by the accused Fuentes Fuentes or the accused Cid Maldonado, struck Valdebenito Vira and caused his death and, for the reasons it develops, it asserts that, therefore, it would not be an impediment to impute responsibility to both for that result, even if it is unknown which of those shots was the one that, in concrete terms, caused the death.

Such a proposition, as can be seen from what was previously transcribed, is opposed to what the lower court judges concluded from the assessment of the evidence presented in the process—who do not even consider it proven that the bullet that struck Valdebenito Vira was fired by a weapon operated by any of the accused—it then being appropriate to examine whether, in arriving at such an assertion, the magistrates incurred an infringement of the rules governing the evidence argued by the appeal, with substantial influence on the dispositive part of the ruling,» the ruling maintains.

The resolution adds that: «Article 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that if the five extremes it addresses are met, the evidence of presumptions 'may' constitute the complete proof of a fact, so that, even if all those requirements are verified, the judge does not necessarily have to consider a fact proven, but only has the power to do so if, in addition, the so-called 'moral conviction' or personal conviction that such a punishable act has actually been committed is present, as provided by Article 456 bis of the same legal text». «Indeed, compliance with the legal norms that regulate admissible means of proof, their probative value, and the burden of proof, only constitutes a procedural prerequisite for a conviction, which, once satisfied, must also be accompanied by the judge's personal conviction, without which the sentencer must always—now peremptorily—acquit, as prescribed by the aforementioned Article 456 bis, without prejudice to the burden of motivating that determination in their ruling».

The questions are then worth asking

What are the subjective aspects that motivate the judgment or the "moral conviction" of Mr. Aldana? What did Mr. Aldana investigate, or how did he investigate, that he supposedly could not determine how a crime was committed in March 1988?

Source: resumen.cl, January 8, 2018