9
34. In this case the problem that arises from the old expression introduced in the
second to last paragraph of Article 132 is presented: the “greater specific
dangerousness of the agent,” concept that was revised by the parties in the process
before the Inter-American Court and through writs of amici curiae that we will
analyze carefully. The concept of dangerousness has been eradicated by more
modern currents of the Criminal law of democratic orientation –modern, however,
with almost one century of validity--, which have insisted on the need to eliminate
this notion of substantive nature, to replace it with guiding information of the
criminal reaction, the entity of the crime, and the guiltiness of the agent.
35. The positivism that pervaded in the last third of the XIX century permeated in
multiple criminal codes, among them the spate of Latin American codes with which
our XX century begun.
The lessons of positivism, whose appeal lies in the
consideration of the causal factors of the crime, both in general and in the specific
dynamics of the agent, were widely received by professionals and students, among
which we were politically active for a long time. The “scientific” appeal of positivism
and the rejection of the judicial formalism hid the risks that it had on liberty and
democracy and the advantages of the latter for the same purposes. Dangerousness
arose based on the hypothesis of the intervention of the State.
36. Based on its dangerousness, the offender –current or future-- could be punished
not for what he has already done, his behavior, his illegal activity, damaging and
culpable, but for what he is, his personality, his tendencies, his possible decisions,
and future and probable behavior, appreciated in the only way it could be: through
predictions. In the end, this generates a criminal system based on the situation of
the perpetrator –in which the reaction is in function of the person--, which contrasts
the Criminal system based on the crime, act or behavior committed –in which the
reaction is to the behavior actually displayed by the agent, the damage or the risk
actually produced, the proven guilt.
37. For the purposes of the trial before the Inter-American Court, the matter may be
considered from a double perspective: as a breach of the right to evidence and to a
defense, in the sense that the indictment did not include the charge of
dangerousness and therefore the defendant was not given the chance to disprove it;
as a transgression of the freedom from criminal ex post facto laws, which states that
only a law adjusted to the act committed may be applied. In the Commission’s
application the first perspective, of procedural nature, prevailed; in the decision of
the Court, which does not reject that approach, but instead complements it, the
second, of material nature, prevails.
38. The Court considered that the inclusion of dangerousness as an element of the
criminal description or as a factor for the determination of the punishment, in its
respective cases, does not comply with the freedom from ex post facto laws that
states the punishment of illicit acts or behaviors performed with guilt, but it does not
authorize the sanction based on a combination of the certainty of pasts acts and the
speculation on future behaviors. In the end, it would not have been satisfactory for
the application of the Pact of San Jose, considered as a single legal body, to ensure
the defendant the possibility to defend himself from the accusation of being
dangerous, that is, of the prediction of possible crimes in sometime in the future.
What is required is a complete elimination of the reference to dangerousness. Thus,
the disposition of the Court in the chapter on reparations, where the possibility of a
new trial subordinated to the due process is mentioned, but it also states that it is
necessary to, in order to comply with Article 2 of the Convention, reform Article 132
Seleccionar párrafo de destino3
Conectar a un párrafo
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Añadir a la tabla de contenidos