Appeal seeks to increase sentence to 45 years for murder of Andes University student in Bogotá
Bogotá's Superior Court is debating whether to increase the 37-year sentence imposed on those responsible for the murder of Jaime Esteban Moreno.
Bogotá's Superior Court decides whether to increase sentence for death of Andes University student
The legal proceedings for the murder of Jaime Esteban Moreno, a student at the Universidad de los Andes, reached a decisive stage on Monday. According to pulzo.com, both the defence of the convicted men and the Office of the Prosecutor presented appeals before Bogotá's Superior Court, seeking to modify the 37-year-and-six-month prison sentence issued against Juan Carlos Suárez Ortiz and Ricardo Rafael González Castro.
The defence argued that the sentence was excessive and invoked the concept of preterintentional murder: a penal category in which the perpetrator intended to injure the victim but not to cause death. On the basis of that argument, they requested a reduction in the sentence.
In contrast, the lawyer for the Moreno family, Camilo Rincón, formally presented an appeal seeking to increase the sentence to 45 years in prison. Rincón identified three aggravating factors that, in his view, distance the case from any accidental interpretation.
The first is the motive for the attack: the convicted men acted in retaliation, convinced that the victim "deserved it" because of previous actions attributed to him by third parties. The second is the deliberate choice of time and place: the assault occurred in the early hours of the morning and in a solitary location, where Moreno had few chances of receiving help. The third is the joint action of both individuals involved, which increased the violence and lethality of the attack.
Rincón requested the court to, in the event of not granting the maximum increase, set the sentence at least within a range of between 500 and 550 months in prison, based on the facts proven during the trial and on the seriousness recognised by the trial judge. The convicted men had no criminal history, but the lawyer maintained that this fact does not neutralise the demonstrated aggravating factors.
The Office of the Prosecutor agreed with the position of the family: the seriousness of the facts demands a stricter sentence than that imposed at trial.
The night of the crime, Moreno had left a nightclub accompanied by a friend. Following an initial altercation outside an establishment, the events escalated to the street at Calle 64 and Carrera 15, where he was brutally assaulted. After being taken to medical facilities, he died that same day as a result of the injuries he received. The trial judge sentenced Suárez Ortiz and González Castro for aggravated murder.
The case has been compared in local media to the murder of Luis Andrés Colmenares, also a university student, because of the date, the university and the circumstances surrounding the death. The magistrates of Bogotá's Superior Court now have in their hands the decision to uphold or modify the original sentence, a ruling that will be determining for both the victim's family and the two convicted men.
Source: Google News CO — Bogotá