This Thursday, the caesura hearing in which Pablo Parra was sentenced to life imprisonment for the femicide of Agustina Fernández in Cipolletti. Parra’s lawyers asked to challenge the verdict of the popular jury: “We consider that the verdict is wrong.” The hearing was led by the technical judge of the process, Guillermo Baquero Lazcano.
Pablo Parra was sentenced to life since it is the only sentence provided for cases of femicides. The caesura trial was a stage that had to be completed; it was a brief process in which the parties requested a sanction and justified it.
The hearing began with the parties’ opening statements.. At that moment The Prosecutor’s Office and the complaint requested that the preventive detention that has applied to Parra since December 2022 be maintained because “the possibilities of escape increased due to the sentence planned for the case.”
Juan Manuel Coto, defense attorney, accompanied the request and the technical judge of the case accepted the request. In this instance, the defense resorted to a “reserve to challenge the jury’s verdict.” Something that the lawyers of Parra justified it by saying that it is a verdict contrary to evidence, the jury only expresses what it defines and not the reasons.
The plaintiff lawyer, Emmanuel Roa Moreno, stated: «The only reasonable, fair and possible punishment is life imprisonment. It was an unnecessary act of violence. “There is no other explanation other than not understanding that he was (Parra) in front of a free woman (Agustina).”
Femicide of Agustina Fernández: what the crime was like
He attack happened in the apartment that Parra rented, located on the ground floor of a complex located on Confluencia Street at 1301 Cipolletti. The young woman was beaten. She suffered head trauma and a broken hand.
He died on July 5, 2022, at the Cipolletti hospital. He was 19 years old.
The chief prosecutor Santiago Márquez Gauna and his counterpart Martín Pezzetta maintained in the arguments -prior to the jury’s deliberation- that The trigger for the attack was that Agustina had relations that July afternoon with a young man, in his apartment, located in the same complex. They observed that Parra listened to them.
According to public and private accusers Parra was obsessed with the young woman, who had arrived in Cipolletti at the beginning of March 2022, from La Pampa, to study Medicine at the National University of Comahue. They highlighted that the victim rejected Parra.
Prosecutors warned the jury that Parra planned the femicide. And to divert the investigation he pretended that Agustina was the victim of a person who came in to rob her and attacked her, at a time when he was not there.
