The Guarantee of Presumption of Innocence and Parallel Trials: Regarding the case Los Babies de Oquendo

Abstract

The relationship between the media and the criminal justice system has generated the emergence of a fully verifiable social phenomenon called parallel trials, which in recent years in the country have generated much concern in a certain sector of the academy. Since the immediate effect of these trials has brought harmful consequences for the criminal process, given that the information that is broadcast through television screens is biased, since only part of the facts under investigation count and the other part hides, which is why, through said information, public opinion is manipulated and, most worryingly, magistrates are influenced so that they issue a resolution in accordance with the parameters established in the media, thus breaking the presumption of innocence and due process guarantees.

Said effect is detrimental to the justice system since judges and prosecutors, as justice operators, are the first to be called upon to respect and guarantee the fundamental rights of the defendants, however, they work protected by information that is broadcast in these media, worse Even when these same officials go out to provide interviews in violation of the provisions of the Preliminary Title of the Criminal Procedure Code, article 2, second paragraph, and article 324 of the reservation of the investigation, since they use the media space to present the acts of investigation carried out in the framework of the process and the limiting measures requested from the judiciary, turning the television set into a space where media justice is done, and where others, known as criminals, are judged with mere suspicions, presumptions and conjectures.

For this reason, it is necessary to analyze one of the most notorious cases in the Constitutional Province of Callao, a space used by the media as a source of criminal news, where the legal situation of citizen Cesar was decided through parallel trials. Augusto Muñoz Gamarra popularly known as «sweet potato», linked to the case known as the «Babys de Oquendo» who was attributed to be the heir of the Cholo Jacinto, who after almost 5 years of investigation and after having been subjected to a trial orally, he was acquitted for the crimes postulated by the representative of the Public Ministry, despite the fact that, according to public opinion, he had already been sentenced.