The Eastern Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office entered a series of observations on the annulment appeal filed by the defense of Nicolás López, where his lawyers accuse infractions of the filmmaker’s fundamental guarantees. Likewise, the Public Ministry requested that the legal action not be heard by the Supreme Court but by the Appeals Court of Viña del Mar.
The Public ministry entered a series of observations on the appeal for annulment that was filed by the defense of Nicolás López, requesting that the legal action not be heard by the Supreme Court.
Experts analyzed the document and qualified it as a “tax strategy” to speed up the processing of the appeal.
Through an eight-page document, the Eastern Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office made a series of observations on the appeal for annulment filed by the defense of Nicolás López.
In the brief, which was also supported by the plaintiff who represents the victims of the case, it is requested that the appeal is heard not by the Supreme Court, but by the Court of Appeals of Valparaíso.
The observations point to redirection of the main cause, where an alleged infringement of due process guarantees is denounced, specifically the principle of innocence.
As they argue in the brief, what is objected to in the appeal “they are the conclusions of fact reached by the judges and the assessment of the means that support them, a matter that is subject to specific control due to the cause of article 374 letter e of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Likewise, it is specified that in case of rejecting the evidence offered, it is appropriate to reject the entire offer because “the appellant party it does not indicate what cause and what constitutive circumstances of any of the causes involved is the one that it intends to prove, breaching the conditions established in article 359 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Finally, they explain that the appeal for annulment is not the instance aimed at forming a conviction regarding the “factual determinations adopted in the sentence”.
For Pelayo Vial, a criminal lawyer and former head of studies at the Public Criminal Defense Office, the fiscal strategy is to establish that there were violations of the fundamental guarantees of the filmmaker.
A similar position was shared by Francisca Castro, also a criminal lawyer, from the firm Castro Asociados, indicating that what is being attempted with the observations is to seek “try to destroy the basis that the defense of Nicolás López uses in the appeal for annulment.”
Along the same lines, lawyer Alberto Marín, director of the Law School of the University of the Americas in Viña del Mar, affirmed that the document also seeks to expedite the processing of the appeal for annulment.
It should be remembered that Nicolás López was convicted of two crimes of sexual abuse, being sentenced to Five years and one day in jail.
Faced with this, the Oral Criminal Trial Court of Viña del Mar ordered his preventive detention, pending the processing of his appeal for annulment, which was revoked by the Supreme Court, ordering his “immediate release.”