Bogotá Superior Court to review 37-year sentence for murder of Los Andes student
The Criminal Division of Bogotá's Superior Court will examine the sentence imposed on two men for the homicide of Jaime Esteban Moreno, which occurred in Chapinero in October 2025.
Three-pronged appeal brings Moreno case to Bogotá Superior Court
The Criminal Division of Bogotá's Superior Court will decide whether to uphold, modify or revoke the sentence of 37 and a half years' imprisonment imposed on the two men found responsible for the aggravated homicide of university student Jaime Esteban Moreno, according to ifmnoticias.com. The General Prosecutor's Office, the victim's family and the defence of the convicted men separately appealed the first-instance ruling.
Criminal Court 801 of Bogotá's Transitory Circuit announced the ruling on 19 October 2026, following an oral trial that began in June that year. The judge declared the two men co-perpetrators of the crime of aggravated homicide and imposed upon them, in addition to the prison sentence, disqualification from exercising public rights and functions for the same period.
The attack occurred in the early morning of 31 October 2025, Halloween night, in the vicinity of a nightclub in the Chapinero sector of Bogotá. Security cameras recorded how the 20-year-old young man was assaulted as he left the venue, walked away without responding and was then caught up by the two men at a corner, where they knocked him down and beat him whilst he lay on the ground. He died hours later.
The judge rejected the defence's arguments, which maintained during the trial that the death had been unintentional—that is, that the defendants did not seek to cause that result—or that it should be attributed to only one of them. Among the circumstances considered by the court was that the victim was attacked whilst defenceless, a factor for aggravation provided for in Article 104 of the Criminal Code.
The case was not resolved through a pre-trial agreement with the Prosecutor's Office.
Family and Prosecutor seek heavier sentence; defence seeks review
The victim's family's lawyer, Camilo Rincón, clarified that the victims' appeal is limited to the punitive amount: whilst acknowledging that the judge was correct in convicting, he considered the sentence lenient and inconsistent with the arguments set out in the ruling itself. The family is requesting that the sentence be increased to 550 months, equivalent to approximately 45 years and 10 months, a figure they had already requested during the trial.
The General Prosecutor's Office, which during the proceedings had requested a sentence of around 45 years and had asked that home detention not be granted, also appealed the sentence. The defence of the convicted men, for their part, appealed the decision with the aim of having the responsibility of their clients reviewed or the legal classification of the crime reconsidered.
Whilst the Superior Court deliberates, the sentence is not final. The convicted men—identified as Suárez Ortiz and González Castro—remain in custody. The court may confirm the sentence, increase or reduce the penalty, or revoke it.
A suspected instigator remains at large
The case has another open front. A woman identified as Kleidymar Paola Fernández Sulbarán, identified by the authorities as the suspected instigator of the assault, has not been apprehended. She is entitled to the presumption of innocence until there is a final conviction.
The homicide of Jaime Esteban Moreno generated widespread shock in Bogotá and in the university community, which has closely followed each stage of the proceedings. The Superior Court's decision will mark the second-instance outcome of one of the criminal cases receiving the most attention in the capital over the past year.
Source: Google News CO — Bogotá