On March 21, 2011, the Extraordinary Visiting Minister Álvaro Carrasco Labra, of the Illustrious Court of Appeals of Copiapó, in case File No. 28.541, heard in the First Civil Court of Copiapó, issued a first-instance sentence in which he convicted MARIO CRISTIAN DE LUJÁN MARTÍNEZ VILLARROEL, SEBASTIÁN GUSTAVO WLADIMIR FLORES CAÑAS, and TEODORO IVO LINGUA LATORRE as perpetrators of the consummated crime of simple homicide, committed against GLORIA ANA STOCKLE POBLETE, sentencing each of them to 5 years and 1 day of presidio mayor in its minimum degree, plus legal accessories and court costs.

Furthermore, regarding the civil portion of the aforementioned sentence, the plea of absolute incompetence to hear the civil lawsuit filed against the Chilean State, raised by the State Defense Council, was upheld.

The civil lawsuit filed by Mr. Erick Villegas González, representing Mr. Jorge Washington, Ms. Susana Margot, Ms. Myriam Elsa, and Mr. Héctor Alfonso, all surnamed Stockle Poblete, is upheld only insofar as the defendants Mario Cristian de Luján Martínez Villarroel, Sebastián Gustavo Wladimir Flores Cañas, and Teodoro Ivo Lingua Latorre are ordered to pay the plaintiffs, jointly and severally, the sum of $100,000,000 (one hundred million pesos) as compensation for damages and moral injury, plus adjustments and interest from the date of this sentence, with costs.

Source: Ddhh.gov.cl, March 21, 2011

Request to clarify summons of General Cheyre regarding the homicide of Gloria Stockle

On January 30, 1984, 19 years ago, the beaten body of university student Gloria Stockle Poblete, showing clear signs of rape, was found on the banks of the Copiapó River, 800 kilometers north of Santiago.

Investigations into the crime, sponsored by lawyer Eric Villegas and conducted by three successive Visiting Ministers—Federico Pizarro, Gloria Collantes, and Alvaro Carrasco—determined that there are serious presumptions that the event took place at the officers' club during a party attended by special guests and representatives of Copiapó society, where the then-Captain Mario Martínez Villarroel, now a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and Lieutenant Sebastián Flores Cañas, now a retired Major, beat and raped the young university student, allegedly accompanied by the civilian Ivo Lingua Latorre, then-Vice Consul of Italy in Copiapó. Since then, the case has been closed on several occasions without the justice system being able to clarify the facts. For a few months now, however, it has been reactivated, and important developments are expected for March or April. Lawyer Erick Villegas, who represents the victim's family, requested a few days ago, for the second time, statements via summons from General Juan Emilio Cheyre to confirm whether any investigation into the murder was carried out while he was commander of the No. 23 Regiment of Copiapó and Intendant of Atacama. The first summons was answered by the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Jorge Arancibia Clavel, who indicated that some inquiries were made into the matter but that it was a "verbal inquiry." "It seems inconsistent to us that a verbal inquiry was conducted when the characteristics of the crime indicate that we are in the presence of a qualified homicide with circumstances that aggravate the responsibility of the perpetrators," maintained Villegas, who finds it striking that the Army, as its officers were being summoned to testify, did not order a formal investigation of the facts at that time. Last year, Villegas requested the indictment of the former Intendant of Atacama, General Alejandro González Samohod, which was denied by the courts. The retired military officer was the commander of the regiment when the dramatic events occurred.

Source: Zonaimpacto.cl, February 22, 2003

Five years and one day of effective prison for Gloria Stockle's killers

On January 29, 1984, the young university student was murdered inside the Copiapó Officers' Club. Two days later, she appeared on the bank of the river that crosses the city. After 27 years dedicated to the case, the plaintiff lawyer, Erick Villegas, succeeded in having two former military officers and one civilian sentenced to presidio mayor in its minimum degree.

Álvaro Carrasco, the visiting minister in the 1984 homicide case of the young university student from Copiapó, Gloria Stockle, released the final first-instance sentence, which condemns former Army Captain Mario Martínez Villarroel, former Army Lieutenant Sebastián Flores Caña, and the civilian Ivo Lingua Latorre to five years and one day of effective prison as perpetrators of the crime.

The information, which appeared Wednesday in the regional newspaper El Chañarcillo, was provided by the plaintiff lawyer, Erick Villegas, who, after 27 years of following the case, managed to have the accused sentenced to said penalty of presidio mayor in its minimum degree, without the right to any alternative sentencing benefits.

To reach this resolution, the visiting minister considered the mitigating factor of criminal responsibility of an irreproachable prior conduct. Although the sentence may seem low considering the serious events surrounding the death of Gloria Stockle, for the plaintiff lawyer it is necessary to keep in mind that "it is an effective prison sentence in which there is no right to any alternative compliance benefit, in addition to highlighting that this is a tremendously solid ruling that has 443 pages in which 27 years of investigation and more than 10 volumes attached to the process are precisely summarized, and which correctly resolves each of the situations that were raised regarding the participation that each of these people had as perpetrators of the homicide of Gloria Stockle Poblete." According to the publication, the three convicted of homicide must pay the victim's family one hundred million pesos as compensation. Now it remains to wait for the three sentenced individuals to be personally notified of said ruling, and then wait for the appeal period, although due to the solidity of the ruling presented by the visiting minister, it is possible that said process will not prosper, and the sentence could begin to be served in the coming months.

THE HOMICIDE

The crime against Gloria Stockle Poblete occurred between January 29 and 30, 1984, in the facilities of the Army Officers' Club in Copiapó. The 21-year-old was found dead on the north bank of the river that crosses the city, due to multiple contusions, complicated closed head trauma, skull base fracture, and intracranial hemorrhage; it was a homicide with rape, according to the Death Certificate from the Legal Medical Institute and the Autopsy Protocol.

In the judicial process instructed to investigate her death, for which a visiting minister was appointed, through statements from eyewitnesses and other evidentiary means, it was established that a private party was being held that night, attended by around 45 people, including uniformed personnel, civilians, and young women.

During the gathering, an argument broke out between two officers, a civilian, and Gloria Stockle, whom they beat, raped, and murdered. Her body was taken from the place in a car and thrown into the Copiapó River, where it was found two days later, semi-submerged and covered with reeds.

The women attending the party were subjected to intimidation and pressure to prevent them from testifying before the courts; one of them was even the victim of an attempted hit-and-run. In 1998, the event was back in the news because the Copiapó Court of Appeals decreed the reopening of the summary proceedings and accepted the measures requested by the plaintiff.

However, the court did not grant the indictment requested against the alleged perpetrators, accomplices, and cover-ups. At the time, plaintiff lawyer Erick Villegas indicated that "this is a process in which for a long time there was an attempt to obstruct the action of justice." He recalled that Captain Mario Martínez Villarroel, Lieutenant Sebastián Flores Caña, and Ivo Lingua Latorre were processed as perpetrators, but they filed a complaint appeal that was rejected by the Supreme Court.

Thus, the indictment of the two officers and the civilian Ivo Lingua as perpetrators was not granted, nor were the indictments as alleged cover-ups of the former Intendant of Copiapó, General (R) Alejandro González, and the civilian Hilda López Candía.

Lawyer Villegas continued his fight by requesting the indictment of a significant number of people for obstruction of justice, several of them retired military officers. In the same year, Villegas declared that the investigation was exhausted because they already had expert reports from the OS-7 of the Carabineros of Antofagasta and Santiago, which determined the place of the crime, the way in which it was committed, and the people who were allegedly eyewitnesses to the event.

Long years of attempts to silence the case passed through all these processes; however, in October 2002, the plaintiffs were able to put the crime back into the public interest when an episode about the homicide of Gloria Stockle was broadcast on the TVN program Enigma.

After the broadcast, the process investigating the death was reopened. The program provided statements that were not included in the ten volumes of the file. Guillermo Muñoz, its host, was called to testify about the findings of the journalistic investigation.

EMBLEMATIC CASE

Of the 31 years that Erick Villegas has been practicing law, 27 have been dedicated to the Stockle case. This was a request he received from Monsignor Fernando Ariztía, when he was Bishop of Copiapó. At that time, the bishop responded to the request of Gloria's mother, who saw with hopelessness how her daughter's case was falling into impunity.

Villegas decided to take the case when he was working at the Vicariate of Solidarity, and since then he fought alongside the victim's siblings to reach the truth in the homicide of the young pedagogy student.

FAMILY MEMBERS

After learning of the sentence, the victim's younger sister, Susana Stockle, told Diario Chañarcillo that "I cannot say that I am happy or satisfied because nothing they do will return my sister to us, nor the 27 years we have spent fighting to know the truth about the horrific end that these people gave her.

I can only think that now I feel calm because I believe that justice was served; we can finally say these are Gloria's killers, because among all my siblings we always said that we would go to the end, even if only one of us was left."

Source: La Nación, March 24, 2011

Supreme Court ratified convictions and compensation for the death of a young woman in 1984

Court sentenced the three defendants to five years in prison, with supervised release.

They must also pay 100 million to Gloria Stockle's siblings. The Supreme Court confirmed the convictions against the three perpetrators of the homicide of young Gloria Stockle Poblete, which occurred between January 29 and 30, 1984, in the city of Copiapó, in addition to the payment of a multi-million peso compensation.

However, the ruling of the highest court invalidated the sentences of Visiting Minister Alvaro Carrasco Labra and the Copiapó Court of Appeals, which had sentenced the three defendants to 5 years and 1 day of prison, without benefits, by applying the principle of "half-prescription" (media prescripción) given the time elapsed between the event and the first indictment issued in 1992.

In a split decision, the ministers of the Second Chamber of the highest court—Milton Juica, Hugo Dolmestch, Carlos Künsemüller, Haroldo Brito, and Juan Escobar (substitute)—determined five years of prison, but with supervised release for former Army Lieutenant Mario Martínez Villarroel, former Army Captain Sebastián Flores Cañas, and former Vice Consul of Italy in Chile Ivo Lingua Latorre.

The determination was adopted with the dissenting vote of ministers Juica and Brito, who considered that the application of the principle was not necessary ex officio, as it was not raised in the cassation appeals filed by the convicted parties.

Likewise, it was ratified that the three convicted parties must pay a total and joint compensation of 100 million pesos to the victim's siblings for the moral injury caused. On the night of January 29, 1984, young Gloria Stockle—who was applying to the University of Atacama—attended a reception party for non-commissioned officers at the casino of the 23rd Regiment of Copiapó and died under strange circumstances, which were determined after more than 20 years of judicial investigation.

Source: Cooperativa.cl, September 24, 2012

Conviction confirmed for those accused of the Gloria Stockle crime

The Copiapó Court of Appeals confirmed the sentence against the convicted individuals Sebastián Flores Caña, Mario Martínez Villarroel, and Ivo Lingua Latorre, who participated as perpetrators in the crime against Gloria Stockle that occurred in January 1984.

Therefore, the three implicated individuals will have to serve the sentence of 5 years and 1 day effectively, without any type of benefits. In addition, the three defendants must pay, jointly and severally, the sum of 100 million pesos to the family for the damage caused.

The young university student was murdered at a party held at the Army Officers' Club on January 29, 1984. According to the file, the individuals at the party beat her, sexually assaulted her, and subsequently, to leave no evidence, threw her on the bank of the Copiapó River, where she was found days later.

Source: Soychile.cl, January 27, 2012

Final rulings in human rights cases: Gloria Stockle homicide

Supreme Court issues final sentence in the Gloria Stockle homicide case: applies gradual prescription and grants benefits On September 24, 2012, the Supreme Court reduced the effective sentences imposed by a lower court, replacing sentences of 5 years and 1 day without benefits with non-effective sentences of 5 years against 3 former Army officers for the simple homicide of Gloria Ana Stockle Poblete, murdered in 1984.

This is the first ruling since the change in the composition of the Penal Chamber at the beginning of the year that applies gradual prescription to lower sentences to a level where they no longer imply the imprisonment of the guilty.

At the same time, there are reasons to think that this may be an exceptional case and not a worrying reversal of the new and positive trend of the Chamber to recognize the inapplicability of gradual prescription to crimes against humanity.

This is because there are elements in the circumstances of the crime that led both the instructing minister and the Penal Chamber to consider it, strictly speaking, a common crime, albeit one committed under the protection of the impunity prevailing in the context of the dictatorship.

At the same time, the ruling reminds us that the current progress that has meant the correct investigation of some human rights cases in Chile in recent times is a precarious advance, as it still rests on being able to qualify each human rights violation as a crime against humanity or a war crime—the only paths currently open to overcome the obstacles of amnesty or prescription.

It reminds us that there is still pending, for example, the state promise to comply with the adverse ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights by modifying the text of the Penal Code that governs the interpretation of the 1978 amnesty law (the most recent in a series of attempts being a motion introduced by senators Alvear, Escalona, Navarro, and Quintana in May 2012 that would explicitly recognize both the non-prescriptibility and the non-amnestiability of crimes against humanity).

The context of the crime committed against Gloria Stockle also raises questions about the almost complete absence of prosecutions for rape or other sexual crimes in human rights cases, even when it is recognized that these were part of the crime committed.

It is striking that the crime of rape and murder of a woman by three uniformed officers ends up qualified as a simple homicide, without aggravating factors. The National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR) recognized Gloria Stockle as a victim of human rights violations.

The CNRR report, published in 1996, specified that her rape and death occurred on January 29, 1984, after participating in a party at the officers' club of the No. 23 Motorized Infantry Regiment of Copiapó.

It declared that her death was the product of the violence to which she was subjected by State agents, who acted by abusing their power, outside their functions, and protected by the authority that ensured their impunity.

Regarding the resolutions of lower courts in the same case, the First Criminal Court of Copiapó issued a conviction on March 21, 2011, against retired Army officers Mario Cristian de Luján Martínez Villarroel, Sebastián Gustavo Wladimir Flores Cañas, and Teodoro Ivo Lingua Latorre, imposing the penalty of 5 years and 1 day of presidio mayor in its minimum degree, as co-perpetrators of the simple homicide of Gloria Stockle.

The ruling did not echo the dimension of abuse of power highlighted by the CNRR, nor, as far as we have been able to ascertain, does it refer to the crime of rape. The same sentence, File No. 28.541, upheld the civil lawsuit filed by 4 siblings of the victim and established that the convicted parties had to pay them the single sum of one hundred million pesos (USD 210,000).

The civil action had also been directed against the Chilean State, but that part of the lawsuit was dismissed by the court. Instead, the "plea of absolute incompetence of the court" presented by the State Defense Council was upheld.

In doing so, the body that represents the interests of the State in judicial cases argued that civil lawsuit matters should not be resolved at the same time or in the same instances as the criminal aspects of the same crime.

This ruling by the Copiapó court was confirmed in all its parts by the Copiapó Court of Appeals on January 27, 2012. Faced with this, the defense attorneys for the convicted parties appealed against the convictions, filing cassation appeals based on the lack of application of prescription and alleged infringements of the rules governing evidence.

They argued that such failures would have meant guilty verdicts for those who were supposedly innocent. The Supreme Court, in a sentence issued on September 24, 2012 (File 2200-2012), rejected the content of the appeals (cassation appeals).

However, it softened the sentences by applying, by majority vote, the "half-prescription." This meant retaining almost the same nominal rate of the sentences (5 years), but reducing their degree to presidio menor in its maximum degree and granting the benefit of supervised release.

From reading the ruling, it is possible to maintain that the Supreme Court considered that the murder of Gloria Stockle corresponded to an abuse of power, which, despite having been committed by Army personnel, had the character of a common crime.

This is because in its more than fifty pages, the ruling makes no mention of the crime as a possible crime against humanity. Also, the reasoning of the ruling refers to normal procedural rules regarding prescription (which is not applicable in cases of crimes against humanity).

The substance of the discussion regarding prescription is concentrated on the debate over whether prescription periods should be counted from the investigation of the crime or rather from the first indictment for it (which, in this case, happened in 1992).

The minority vote, held by ministers Milton Juica and Haroldo Brito, also does not object to the qualification of the crime as a simple homicide, but rather objects that the chamber applied ex officio a figure—the "half-prescription"—that was not mentioned in the appeals filed by the defense (It should be noted that when a case is elevated to the Supreme Court, its function is only or mainly to examine whether the errors or omissions that the appellant indicates in the ruling of the lower courts actually exist.

If it decides that the previous ruling is technically and legally correct, it must ratify it; otherwise, it can send it back to the lower court for changes or it can issue a replacement sentence, as it did in this case).

It should also be noted that although the non-compliance or active transgression by the State of its duties to safeguard and protect the physical and psychological integrity of its inhabitants is classifiable as a human rights violation, the concept of a crime against humanity applied to the crimes of the Chilean dictatorship generally connotes a certain degree of systematicity and planning, with an intention to eliminate or annihilate opposition and/or terrorize the population in general.

In the particular case of Gloria Stockle, it seems the crime was due more to the personal decision of three individuals to commit an act of atrocious criminality protected by the generalized sensation of impunity and absence of limits on the power of uniformed personnel that prevailed in times of dictatorship.

There are no indices, at least of general public knowledge, that suggest it responded in detail or even in part to a premeditated plan or superior orders.

Source: icso.cl, September 2012

Topics: Country | Human Rights | Judicial Justice ratified conviction of two former military officers and one civilian for the homicide of a young woman in 1984

The Copiapó Court of Appeals ratified this Monday the ruling of the visiting minister, who convicted two military officers and one civilian for the murder and rape of the young university student Gloria Stockle, which occurred on January 29, 1984, while she was participating in a party inside the Army officers' club.

In this way, Minister Pablo Krum ratified the sentence of five years and one day of effective prison for former Army members Mario Martínez Villarroel and Sebastián Flores Cañas, in addition to the civilian Teodoro Lingua Latorre, who must also pay compensation of 100 million pesos to the family of the victim, who was 21 years old at the time of her death. "The sentence maintained the penalties dictated by the extraordinary visiting minister, for which the individuals involved were sentenced to 5 years and 1 day," the minister confirmed.

The Court of Appeals accepted the evidence that established that Martínez Villarroel, Flores Cañas, and Lingua Latorre participated in the homicide of the young university student, who was found lifeless on the bank of the Copiapó River.

For his part, the family's lawyer, Erick Villegas, valued that the courts had rejected the attempts of the accused to prescribe the crime committed in Copiapó in 1984. "The sentence rejects the arguments of the convicted parties, in the sense of alleging the prescription of the criminal action.

The Court took charge of those presentations and rejected them in their entirety," he stated. From the young woman's family, her sisters, Susana and Angélica Stockle, were satisfied with the ruling, although they lamented that after 28 years since Gloria's death, her mother and one of her brothers were not able to witness the conviction of the young woman's killers. "Justice was served and what the Court had decided in the first instance that they were guilty was ratified," pointed out Susana, while Angélica commented that "what I regret is that part of the family is no longer with us; my mom and my brother, who suffered with her death, are no longer here," she concluded.

Source: cooperativa.cl, January 30, 2012