2019News

Court reduces Marlin Martínez’s sentence, she could get out in four months

The Criminal Chamber of the Court of Appeals of San Francisco de Macoris announced a reduction in the five-year sentence of Marlin Martínez to two years. This means, the woman who was accused as an accomplice to her son in the murder of a 16-year old pregnant Emely Peguero, could be out of jail in four months, or by September 2019 because she has been in jail since September 2017.

The Court of Appeals based the reduction of the jail time on that Marlin Martinez was not guilty of abducting the five-month pregnant 16-year old girl and only of hiding the corpse. She was abducted on 23 August and the corpse was uncovered on 31 August 2017, hidden inside a suitcase.

The 30-year sentence to her son for first-degree murder, who was 19 years old at the time of the crime, was maintained.

Attorney General Jean Alain Rodríguez expressed his disagreement and says he will take the case to the Supreme Court of Justice. He says prosecutors seek to establish the degree of complicity of Marlin Martinez in order to secure a 20-year sentence for the woman. At the time of the murder, Martínez was a deputy director of Migration in the Medina administration.

“As we have promised since the beginning of the judicial process that we are carrying out in this case, we will seek justice, you can continue to count on it, we will take the case to the last consequences,” said the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

In this sense, he reiterated that the Public Ministry has sufficient and reliable evidence to prove that Marlin Martinez was an accomplice to his son Marlon Martinez in the murder of the 16-year-old girl in August 2017 in San Francisco de Macoris, Duarte province.

The Court of Appeals argued that Art. 359 of the Dominican Penal Code establishes that “anyone who conceals a body of a murdered person shall be punished with a prison term of six months to two years or to more severe penalties if established the person has been an accomplice to the crime.

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16 May 2019