74.
During the public hearing, the doctor who had attended Manuela during the emergency she
suffered and had reported the alleged victim to the Office of the Public Prosecutor for a possible abortion also
testified. In her testimony, she stated the following:
(...) about 40 centimeters of the umbilical cord emerged from the vaginal orifice. It was solid,
not gelatinous, corresponding to a term pregnancy. It was cleanly cut, as if with scissors (…)
(...) She testified that while interviewing her (…) she said she did not know anything about the
newborn, that she did not know if it was alive or dead, as she had fainted during labor, but
while she fainted had pushed, something the witness says is not possible. The woman also
stated (…) that the child was the result of infidelity; based on all these inconsistencies, she
made the decision to inform the office of the public prosecutor (…) the witness recalls that
something peculiar the woman told her (…) was that a day before giving birth, she had fallen,
and since then she had been in pain, but there was no physical evidence of the fall (…).55
75.
Another person who testified during the public hearing was the investigator in Manuela's case,
who described the interview with the alleged victim on the day she came to the hospital:
(...) At first she told her that nothing it happened, later she said she was married and that her
husband had lived in the United States for five years, but that she became pregnant by another
person who would not take responsibility; and that in her home, her whole family knew she
was pregnant and everyone where she lived also knew (…).56
76.
During the hearing, the public defender asked that Manuela be acquitted, noting the lack of
consistency between the testimony of the witnesses and the expert who said it could have been the result of an
accidental fall.57
4.
Guilty verdict and cassation
77.
On August 11, 2008, the Criminal Trial Court of San Francisco Gotera issued a guilty verdict
and sentenced the alleged victim to 30 years in prison for the crime of aggravated homicide. Among its
considerations, the Court concluded the following:
(...) That on having medically proven that the deceased was born alive and remained so for
between 10 and 15 minutes until asphyxiating in the feces of the septic pit, the newborn had
its own independent life and legal existence, which, in accordance with the criteria or content
of Article 72 paragraph 2 of the Civil Code, "begins at birth, that is, on complete separation
from the mother."
(...) That this act is defined by law as a crime, as it matches the description of the prohibited
conduct of “killing” a person—in this case, a newborn—described in Article 128, as the act
entailed a causal relationship in the form of the immediate temporal succession of the action
of discarding the newborn to take its life and the result obtained, which was its death (...)
(...) That the birth of the deceased was the result of the woman’s giving birth outside of a
hospital (...) the woman is therefore the biological mother of the deceased (...) which, a priori,
constitutes an aggravating factor of homicide as defined in paragraph 1 of Article 129.
Annex 27. Criminal case file TS066/2008. Judgment issued by the Criminal Trial Court of San Francisco Gotera, Department of
Morazán, August 11, 2008. Annex 2 to the initial petition of March 21, 2012, pg. 142 and 142.1.
56 Annex 27. Criminal case file TS066/2008. Judgment issued by the Criminal Trial Court of San Francisco Gotera, Department of
Morazán, August 11, 2008. Annex 2 to the initial petition of March 21, 2012, pg. 142 and 142.1.
57 Annex 27. Criminal case file TS066/2008. Judgment issued by the Criminal Trial Court of San Francisco Gotera, Department of
Morazán, August 11, 2008. Annex 2 to the initial petition of March 21, 2012, pg. 142 and 142.1.
55
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