The senator of the Colorado Party Andres Ojeda sent a bill to reform part of the article of the Penal Code that was not applied to absolve Moisés Martínez for the murder of his father.
The 28-year-old was sentenced to 12 years in prison by kill with 15 shots to her father, who had a history of abuse against his siblings and had been convicted in 2010 of violent indecent assault, after one of his daughters reported him for abusing her.
For this and other reasons, Martínez’s defense had asked to acquit him by applying the article 36 of the Penal Codewhich establishes that the crime can be forgivable when done as consequence of domestic violence. However, Justice did not grant the request.
Now the Colorado senator sent a bill to modify this article.
Currently, this section states that “the state of intense commotion caused by the chronic suffering resulting from domestic violenceempowers the Judge to exonerate punishment for the crimes of homicide and injuries”, if certain requirements are met.
The change proposes that “the chronic suffering and the latent threat of the lasting danger to life, physical integrity or freedom, as a result of domestic violence, empowers the Judge to exonerate punishment for the crimes of homicide and injuries“, also with certain requirements.
The requirement that is requested to be modified is the third, which would establish: if “the actions of the State had been ineffective in protecting the victims of domestic violence or, foreseeably ineffective, considering the antecedents and the dangerous circumstances of the case“.
The prosecutor of the case Sabrina Flores He stated that once the father served his 2010 sentence, “new acts of violence” or “new complaints” did not arise until the day of the homicide. Furthermore, the prosecutor understood that the sentence was “according” to the evidence collected.
In the explanatory statement of the Ojeda project It is maintained that the proposed modification “does not seek to justify violence, but rather to empower the magistrate so that, in the exercise of the jurisdictional function, can dispense with criminal punishment when the act is the ultimate consequence of a state of extreme vulnerability and institutional abandonment“.
This change “regards, in particular, those cases in which, despite institutional intervention within the reasonable possibility of requiring it, the available measures are not suitable to neutralize the riskeither for his insufficiency, delay or non-compliance“.
“To this end, the judge must consider the background of the case, the repetition of violent behavior and the level of danger evidenced, in order to consider whether, in the specific circumstances, the state response was or would have been reasonably effective in protecting the victim“, according to the bill.
