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Despite the impulse with which it came from the Chamber of Deputies, the Senate was against the constitutional accusation against Silvana Donoso. Although the official vote will be tomorrow Thursday, practically all the senators rejected the libel due to the possible negligence in which the minister would have incurred when presiding over the commission that granted parole to Hugo Bustamante, accused of the femicide of Ámbar Cornejo.
So far, 26 senators have advanced their vote, three will vote in favor, one will abstain and 23 will vote against. The presentation of 7 senators was pending and three have already been disqualified.
Although the three informant deputies arrived convinced of their arguments, accusing Donoso for notable neglect of duties and for transgressing international treaties related to the violation of the rights of children and adolescents, the senators dismissed the antecedents with harsh expositions.
The defense of the judge did the same. As it was in the House, they stressed that a tool was being forced. The “reinforcement” of the team was also surprised. One of the heavyweight lawyers in the case, Luis Hermosilla, was present.
Until recently, he had remained in a second line, leading the defense alongside Donoso’s half-brother Samuel and Gabriel Zaliasnik, but that changed. His closeness with the official representatives had to be used.
One of the high points occurred when Deputy Andrés Longton summoned the senators: “If they reject this accusation, the next decision of the minister will also be your responsibility.” That was not accepted by the president of the Senate, Adriana Muñoz, for which Longton apologized.
The other eight accusations against ministers of the Judicial Power
The accusation against Silvana Donoso is not the first that has been presented against any authority of the Judicial Power. Throughout history, there is a record of accusations against judges of the superior courts since 1868. And since the return to democracy, eight other indictments have been brought against 19 ministers. Of course, they all pointed to members of the Supreme Court, so Andrés Longton’s libel was the first that has persecuted a minister of an Appeals Court.
Of the accusations filed since 1990, six were dismissed; one was understood as not presented, after the deputies accepted the previous question raised by the defendants’ defenses (Domingo Kokisch, Eleodoro Ortiz and Jorge Rodríguez A.); and only one was admitted for processing and subsequently partially accepted. This action culminated in the removal of Supreme Court Minister Hernán Cereceda, who was also banned from holding public or popular election positions for 5 years.
It was considered that the cause of “notable abandonment of duties” concurred, due to the alleged denial of justice in the investigation of the crime against the MIR leader Alfonso Chanfreau. There were 25 votes in favor, but one is the one that draws the most attention, that of Sebastián Piñera, who at that time was a RN senator and supported the third chapter of the libel.
In the same process, the arguments presented against Lionel Beraud and Germán Valenzuela were dismissed.
Senators’ arguments
Luz Ebensperger (against)
“I believe that Minister Donoso has made the wrong decisions. However, it is risky that the political parties are called to remove the judges.”
Carlos Bianchi (against)
“The decision of the accused was taken under the protection of a current law. I do not consider that the breach of duty qualifies as remarkable.”
Juan Pablo Letelier (against)
“Beyond the fact that I did not like the law, I do not come to the conviction that they acted outside the law. I feel that this accusation is motivated by the murder of Ámbar, and nobody in this room is responsible for that.”
Alejandro Guillier (against)
“It is not appropriate to remove a judge for applying a law where many are responsible. Punishing a judge will not solve anything.”
Isabel Allende (against)
“Releasing a double homicide, one can see today as a very bad decision. Judging what happened four years later seems not very objective. I hope that we will be more rigorous in setting the limits of the benefit of parole. “.
Claudio Alvarado (against)
“Minister Donoso applied the current law, which due to its shortcomings was subsequently modified.”
Francisco Huenchumilla (against)
“I wonder why the deputies took four years to exercise this power. They exercise it when one of the beneficiaries of that collective freedom commits the reprehensible murder of Ámbar (…) It is one of the weakest accusations that I have seen to me in my time as a senator. “
Rabindranath Quinteros (against)
“Although I share the background of the accusation and the criticism of the system, I have to admit that this interpretation is valid and does not serve as the basis for an accusation for notable abandonment of duties.”
Alejandro Navarro (against)
“What is at stake is not only the situation of the judge, this allows us to X-ray the system and verify once again that it has failed.”
Pedro Araya (against)
“The present accusation is based on the mere fact that the accusers do not share the jurisprudential criterion defended by Minister Donoso”
Jorge Pizarro (against)
“It is evident that there is only one question of a communicational order. As a result of that emotionality, in my opinion, two issues have been raised that are extraordinarily serious: it was directly intended to establish the responsibility for the death of amber in Mrs. Donoso and that she has a guaranteed trajectory “.
Adriana Muñoz (against)
“Probably it could be more zealous and ask for more information. Possibly the Gendarmerie should have issued more reports, but that falls within the scope of the criteria and personal evaluations that some of us can make of a judge, does not imply the neglect of a duty. No In my opinion, any legal norm has been violated (…) One cannot criminalize a person for an inaction of the State. “
Carlos Montes (against)
“The Senate, each one of us, should assume that Chilean society does not have an educational system that is at the level of today’s world. Our generation has immense challenges. Pretending to concentrate the evils in a minister of the Court of Appeals can be a way to avoid transforming many institutions of our democracy “.
José Miguel Insulza (against)
“The accusation does not meet sufficient conditions to prove the notable abandonment of duties.”
Iván Moreira (in favor)
“The actions of the minister constitute a notable abandonment of duties. It is a difficult decision, but I firmly believe based on the elements exposed. I hope it is a present so that public officials know that meeting the minimum is not enough. I have the conviction that that my vote responds to the negligence and indolence of Minister Silvana Donoso “.
Carmen Gloria Aravena (against)
“There are no requirements for the notable abandonment of duties to be configured. Despite the fact that I believe that not even the possible was done to do justice, and the minimum was met, there are no grounds to support the accusation.”
Felipe Harboe (against)
“The impossibility of resolving differences may lead us to exacerbate the use of the constitutional accusation, as a weakening of some of the functions of the State or to try to impose in this way the criteria that the political power has not been able to translate into the law”.
Jaime Quintana (against)
“How can a judge imagine that one of the beneficiaries to commit an act of such savagery. I make a call to stop the show.”
Juan Antonio Coloma (against)
“For something there was an awareness that there was a legal institutionality that, by leaving this amplitude, could be giving wrong signals that later the norm is changed.”
Juan Ignacio Latorre (against)
Carolina Goic (against)
José Miguel Durana (abstention)
Yasna Provoste (against)
Ximena Rincón (against)
“The Commission, not the judge, acted within the framework that existed in 2016. We know that the system failed, the judge’s decision has nothing to do with that. I regret that we instrumentalize children for something that does not correspond.”
Jacqueline Van Rysselberghe (a favor)
“As dangerous as the non-independence of the powers, it is the bias at the time of exercising the judicial work and I believe that this judge acted with a bias. If conditional release were a right, why is it not intensive and is denied to inmates of Punta Peuco “.
Marcela Sabat (in favor of chapter 1)
“We must send a signal, even if it is late, to the victims and so that rigor is what prevails.”
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