while the conviction was in force In addition, the ruling did not grant the sentenced men any alternative benefits while serving their punishment. 99. They say that Santiago Appellate Court upheld the judgment at second instance on January 5, 2009. In addition, they say that on January 25, 2010, the Supreme Court, examining cassation applications, vacated the second-instant judgment sua sponte based on its finding that it contained formal errors, and issued a substitute judgment in which it confirmed the judgment at first instance, while applying to three of the convicted men the mitigating circumstance of irreproachable past conduct and to all of the convicted men the benefit of partial lapse of the statutory time period. They say that, as a result, Juan Manuel Contreras was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, while the other convicted men were sentenced to three years' imprisonment; all were granted supervised release. 13. Case of Gerardo Antonio Encina Pérez and family 100. On August 16, 2010, the petitioners expanded the petition lodged on behalf of Gerardo Antonio Encina Pérez and his family. 101. The petitioners say that the alleged victim was a member of the Socialist Party and that early in October 1973 a police patrol arrived at his house looking for him. Upon not finding him, they left instructions for him to go to the Fifth Carabineros Station in San Javier. They say that Gerardo Antonio Encina Pérez had been detained previously and turned over to the military prosecutor’s office in Linares. At the time he was on bonded release with the obligation to present himself at the military prosecutor’s office weekly. Accordingly, upon returning home he decided to go to the military prosecutor’s office with his wife and then to the police unit, where he was detained. They say that his wife waited for him all day and returned the next without receiving a satisfactory explanation. He has not been heard from since. 102. They say that around 10 or 15 days later, family members of other disappeared persons from the same area requested permission from the local military authority to drag the River Loncomilla to see if they could find their relatives’ remains. The search turned up the corpse of Gerardo Antonio Encina Pérez with signs that he had been shot. They were forced to return the body to the river for fear of reprisals, as they only had permission to recover the bodies of their family members. 103. The petition says that as a result, his spouse immediately approached the military prosecutor and the governor of the zone, to no avail. They say that in 1990 his spouse went to the CNVR and the alleged victim’s case was classified as that of a disappeared detainee. At the end of its term that commission referred the case to the Court of First Instance of San Javier, and a proceeding was instituted on February 20, 1991. The petitioners say that on June 21, 1994, after an inadequate investigation, the case was provisionally dismissed for lack of evidence to bring charges against a particular individual. 104. The complaint states that on June 20, 2003, the plenary of Talca Appellate Court agreed to appoint a judge exclusively devoted to cases of human rights violations and, as a result, the case was assigned to the Judge of the Court of First Instance of San Javier. The PDH became a co-plaintiff in the proceeding on July 3, 2003, and on August 29 that year two former Army officers and one former Carabineros officer were put on trial as perpetrators of the crime of aggravated kidnapping. 105. The petitioners say that, subsequently, the cases involving human rights violations were transferred to a judge of the Talca Appellate Court, who reclassified the crime as aggravated homicide and passed sentence on August 14, 2005, acquitting two of the accused: one on the grounds that the criminal action was extinguished because the statute of limitations had run, and the other because his participation was not proved. She acquitted the third person accused in the proceeding owing to the fact that he was deceased. The documents provided to the Commission indicate that the first-instance decision found, based on the testimony of witnesses in the proceeding, that the discovery of the alleged victim’s body in the River Loncomilla in October 1973 was beyond doubt, and therefore the alleged crime of aggravated kidnapping was dismissed, for which reason the legal fiction that held that the wrongdoing was a continuing offense did not apply in that case. 17