The defense of the teacher accused of committing abuses against boys and girls at Jardín 31 in Neuquén expressed his disagreement with the recent ruling of the Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice that blocked his attempt to take the case to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, and anticipated the next steps.
Lawyer Gustavo Palmieri met on Saturday morning with the music teacher, who is under house arrest after having spent 18 months in preventive detention. They analyzed the decision of the TSJ published by RÍO NEGRO newspaper which paves the way for a jury trial date to be set.
Possible trial dates are already mentioned as starting in the second half of August or September. The organization will be complex, and the entire process takes place behind closed doors.
Palmieri said that file a complaint to reach the Court that way. In any case, the complaint does not have suspensive effects, that is, the process will continue.
In parallel, the lawyer said that will appeal to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because it considers that fundamental rights were violated in the defense of the accused.
Complaints against prosecutors
But the fundamental change that Palmieri revealed is related to the city in which the trial will take place. «We thought that it was not possible to form an objective popular jury in Neuquén and we were going to request a change of venue, but Now we think that it is possiblebased on what happened in the Sexual Crimes Prosecutor’s Office”, which is in charge of supporting the accusation against the teacher.
He added that “We are going to denounce the chief prosecutor Maximiliano Breide Obeid and the prosecutor in the Manuel Islas case for poor performance and ethical misconduct”Palmieri said.
The complaints will not be due to the actions of the prosecutors in the investigation of the alleged abuses in garden 31 but in another case, against a man accused of two acts of abuse who was acquitted in a jury trial. That defendant was also defended by Palmieri and another lawyer, Sebastián Perazzoli.
«That prosecutor’s office is questioned, and We hope that institutionally there will be some response to the poor performance of those prosecutors,” Palmieri added. “We will see what impact that has in the case of Jardín 31, because the same prosecutors are going to intervene.”
Finally, the defense attorney indicated that They will ask for the possibility of interviewing the complainants before trial by jury. “We have the right to control those statements, it will not be fair and appropriate if we go to trial without that first-hand information,” he explained.
