Constitutional Court upholds 20-year prison sentence for soldier for killing two men

The Constitutional Court (TC) declared inadmissible the appeal for constitutional review of jurisdictional decision filed by the first lieutenant of the Army of the Dominican Republic (ERD), Yarin Esteudy Novas Sena, sentenced to 20 years in prison, for killing two men who allegedly assaulted him.

The military man’s appeal sought to reverse Ruling No. 1305, issued by the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ) on 30 October 2019, which confirms the sentence imposed by the judges of the Collegiate Court of the Judicial District of Santo Domingo.

Novas Sena was convicted following a December 2014 incident in Los Guaricanos, Santo Domingo Norte, where he killed Manuel José Crespo Núñez (“El Mello”) and Yarel Jesús Taveras Ulloa (“El Guardia”), who had allegedly assaulted him minutes earlier and robbed him of cash and a cell phone, by gunshot wounds.

Despite the TC finding the appeal valid with respect to the filing deadline (due to an incorrect notification to the lawyer rather than directly to the appellant), the final decision was based on the lack of adequate motivation in Novas Sena’s brief.

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The Constitutional Court granted the Attorney General’s Office’s request, which argued that the appeal did not comply with the requirements of Law No. 137-11, the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court.

Arguments of the Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court observed that the appellant limited himself to invoking an alleged violation of the principle of legality and to issuing “slight, loose and generalized judgments,” such as: “the court erred in not varying the qualification as it should…”

Absence of Subsumption

Novas Sena limited himself to transcribing legal and constitutional articles (such as articles 321 and 329, paragraph 2) of the Criminal Code, and 40.13 of the Constitution, without making any analysis or connection of said norms with his particular case.

Impossibility of Weighing

The court concluded that these superficial questions prevented an “effective weighing” and verification of whether the challenged ruling had incurred procedural flaws or violations of fundamental rights, as required by law.

Consequently, the TC declared the appeal inadmissible, implicitly confirming the previous decision of the Second Chamber of the SCJ. The appeal was declared free of costs.