Santo Domingo.- The deputy prosecutor and director of Prosecution, Mirna Ortiz, assured this Wednesday that the Public Ministry dismantled the arguments presented by the defense of former Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez, who is seeking the extinction of the criminal action in the Medusa case due to the alleged expiration of the maximum duration of the process.
At the end of the hearing, Ortiz explained that the prosecution presented a detailed chronology of the case’s development to the court, with which, as he stated, it was demonstrated that it was the defendants themselves who promoted multiple incidents to delay the hearing of the case.
“The actual chronology of the proceedings and the hearing minutes themselves demonstrate what the conduct of the defendants was from the first day, attempting to delay knowledge of the process in order to now claim to benefit from the expiration of the maximum time limit,” the magistrate stated.
As an example, he indicated that Jean Alain Rodríguez’s defense requested more than 100 business days during the preliminary hearing to file their defense brief, which is why he considered it contradictory that they now allege an unreasonable duration of the process.
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Ortiz further maintained that the position of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is supported by the jurisprudence of courts of various instances, including appellate courts, the Supreme Court of Justice, and the Constitutional Court, which, he stated, establish that cases declared complex must be evaluated under different criteria than ordinary cases.
In that sense, he recalled that those criteria were also incorporated by the legislator in articles 146 and 150 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that, in her opinion, there are no grounds to declare the extinction of the criminal action and expressed confidence that the court will reject the request submitted by the defense of the main defendant in the Medusa case.
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During the hearing, Jean Alain Rodríguez’s defense insisted that several judicial decisions favor their argument regarding the termination of the proceedings. However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office responded by presenting a compilation of resolutions and judicial precedents that, it claimed, support the continuation of the trial.
