In the case of the death of 24-year old David de los Santos Correa, the National District prosecution has requested that the First Collegiate Court of the National District impose a maximum of 30 years in prison on four members of the Police and three civilians.
They are accused of the savage beating at the Police detachment in Naco on 27 April 2022 when the young man was taken after being arrested. He was taken there for investigation after an employee at the Agora Mall store Senses called the mall security after comments made by de los Santos to a store clerk.
The accusatory file says he was taken from the Mall to the Naco police station where he suffered the beating and then to the Moscoso Puello public hospital where he did not receive timely care. His family eventually found him and took him to the Dario Contreras trauma hospital where he died shortly after on 1 May 2022. He lived with his family in Los Alcarrizos.
The accused are the civilians Santiago Mateo Victoriano, Michael Pérez Ramos and Jean Carlos Martínez Peña that are accused of physically carrying out the beating in the cell. Also the police officers, Captain Domingo Alberto Rodríguez, second lieutenant Germán García de la Cruz, corporal Alfonso Decena Hernández and private Sari Manuel González García that were on service that evening and are incriminated in the case as co-perpetrators.
The prosecutors accuse three civilians of homicide, torture and barbarism and request that they be sentenced to 30 years, qualifying their conduct as a clear violation of articles 295 and 303-4, numerals 2 and 9, and article 304 of the Penal Code.
Article 303-4 of the Dominican Penal Code states that: “Torture or barbaric acts committed by several persons acting as perpetrators or accomplices against a person, whose particular vulnerability, due to age, illness, disability, physical or mental deficiency or disability, or pregnancy, is apparent or known, are punishable by thirty years of rigorous imprisonment….”.
In the case of the charged policemen, the prosecution says the officers violated articles 186,198, 295, 303-4 and 341 of the Dominican Penal Code, which penalize the allowing of abuses against a detained person and for their complicity in the commission of a homicide, barbarism, and violation of article 153 of the Law (590) Organic Law of the National Police. Article 153 of Law 590 punishes the practice of inhuman, degrading, discriminatory or vexatious treatment of citizens in police custody, as occurred with the detainee and now deceased David de los Santos Correa.
The Prosecutors are also requesting two years of jail for the security of Agora Mall, Ambriori Montero Otaño, Álvaro David Beltrán Pérez, Yubaris Méndez Ferreras and Juan Reyes de la Cruz, for having incurred in the illegal arrest of young David de los Santos, in violation of article 341 of the Dominican Penal Code.
The Penal Code article establishes that: “Those who without the order of a constituted authority and outside the cases that the law allows the accused to be apprehended, arrest, detain or lock up one or more persons; those who provide the place for the detention or confinement to take place; those who in any way assist in carrying out the detention or confinement, are guilty of illegal confinement and as such, subject to the penalty of minor imprisonment”.
In their final conclusions, where they request the imposition of the sentences against the 11 accused, the litigating prosecutors Magalys Sanchez, Maria Silvestre and Mariela Ramos concluded that the system failed David de los Santos. They called for exemplary sentences to the perpetrators of this horrendous crime.
“If those police officers had acted correctly in this case, we would not be here today. The system failed David de los Santos… There was contempt for human dignity and in the same way, the perpetrators of this crime acted like monsters and with their actions, they compromised their criminal responsibility,” said in her closing speech the prosecutor magistrate María Silvestre.
The judge is expected to announce the verdict on 20 June 2023.
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Attorney General Office
19 June 2023