Mendoza: a policeman will go to trial for the case of a transvesticide

According to the authorities, a mendoza police officer will be subjected from tomorrow to a trial by popular juries for the case of a transvesticide. This is the first debate of its kind in that province that will deal with the aggravating factor of “hatred of gender expression”. The trial will take place in the new Criminal Judicial Pole, located in the capital of Mendoza and it is expected that this Monday a hearing called “voir dire” will be held to select the 12 jurors and alternates that will make up the popular court. The file attributes to the detainee the crime of “homicide aggravated by the use of a firearm, by gender hatred or sexual orientation (transvesticide), by the function of police, cruelty and malice “, which provides for the penalty of life imprisonment. It is estimated that the debate will take place with hearings throughout the week and that on Friday, September 16, after the closing arguments of the parties, the jury will be in a position to proceed to deliberate. For the Public Ministry, the chief prosecutor of Homicides Fernando Guzzo and the prosecutor Andrea Lazo, who carried out the investigation of the case raised to trial months ago, will intervene in the oral debate. In conversation with Télam, lawyer Beigel said that, in addition to the conviction of the policeman, they seek to make visible “that it was a transvesticide” and also “sensitize the Mendoza community regarding the marginalization and exclusion suffered by transvestite and trans people.” On the other hand, the defendant’s defense argued that there was a previous “unjustified” assault by the fatal victim and that it was a homicide in excess of self-defense, which provides for a lesser penalty. The case
The murder occurred in the early morning of Saturday, August 29, 2020 when the victim was shot six times from a vehicle on Correa Saa and Costanera streets, in the department of Guaymallén.La arrest could be carried out thanks to the kidnapping of video footage by the Homicide Division of the Mendoza Police, the testimony of a witness and a georeferential report on telephone communications generated in the area that would locate the former policeman as the main suspect of the transvesticide.

Original source in Spanish