They condemned the province of Buenos Aires to compensate a former detainee for ill-treatment in prison

The province of Buenos Aires has been ordered to pay 2,540,000 pesos in damages to a man who sued the provincial government after being imprisoned. He said he was arrested for a “miscarriage of justice” and suffered ill-treatment behind bars, with “deficient medical care and lack of treatment for various ailments and illnesses”. A judgment gave him partial reason and ordered compensation. The judgment in question, published last week on the jurisprudence site of the Ministry of Justice of the Nation, was handed down last December by Judge Maria Ventura Martinez of the Court of First Instance in Administrative Litigation 4 of La Plata.

There, the lawsuit against the provincial prosecutor of the man who demanded the payment of compensation due to two different facts was evaluated. In the first, he said, he spent 51 months in pre-trial detention after a search in which cocaine was found in his home and which led to the opening of a criminal investigation. Four years later, he ended up being acquitted after the prosecution was dropped during the oral hearing. In this case, the plaintiff sought compensation for “miscarriage of justice” because of “unreasonable term” in which he had been deprived of his liberty from 2009 to 2013. However, the judge considered the fact prescribed -because more than 2 years had passed since his release from prison and the filing of the complaint in 2016- and dismissed this request in order to the “exception of limitation” invoked by the defense of the provincial State.

The second fact revolved around the harm suffered by the actor during preventive detention”ordered after the search of 11-04-2013, for presumed possession of narcotics for marketing purposes”. He was released after 24 months when the court seized of the case considered that “the duly issued search warrant was not duly founded (…), therefore it is null and void and therefore (. ..) also the subsequent acts issued as a result, as well as the order of arrest and preventive detention”, reviewed the judgment to which he had access GlobeLiveMedia.

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“The central axis of this dispute is to determine whether the irregular delivery of the service of justice, compromising the patrimonial responsibility of the State”, evaluated the judge. In this respect, he indicated: “After a detailed analysis of the evidence in the file, it is proven that M. was deprived of his liberty from 04-11-2013 to 14-10-2015 and that, during all this time, suffered from a series of health problems which were not taken care of quickly or properlyeither because of the delay in obtaining appointments, or because, even with an assigned appointment, his transfer to the health unit or hospital did not take place”.

“Concretely, it is verified that he suffered from a herniated disc in his fourth and fifth vertebrae, which caused him severe pain and sleep disturbances and that, although he was recommended to consult a spinal traumatologist, undergo additional studies and undergo sessions of rehabilitation, there is no evidence that such extremes have been reached,” he said.

And he added: “Likewise, it has been proved that he had stones in one of your kidneys, which caused him severe pain in the abdominal and genital areas and, despite this, he was not taken care of by a urologist, a professional capable of carrying out the practice indicated to him -lithotripsy- “. In turn, thanks to the analysis of the evidence, it was verified that “the actor was transferred several times from one penitentiary unit to another, despite his separate requests to stay in one of Florencio Varela in because of his closeness to his family, and that said changes have negatively affected his state of health.

“At the same time, it is verified that, as a result of changes of units or flags, he had to sleep on the floor for lack of a bed, they did not provide him with food or he could not clean himself, as well as, on some occasions, he was subjected to solitary confinement without justification apparent, preventing him from a minimum movement to be able to relieve his back pain”, he added.

According Martinezthe actor himself and the Undersecretary for Human Rights of the Municipality of La Plata and the committee against torture of the Provincial Memory Commission had filed claims and complaints with the judicial department of La Plata rConcerning the lack of medical care and the suffering of the detainee. He even launched a habeas corpus appeal which was denied by the Court of Guarantee No. 5 after having considered that “the conditions of detention were not aggravated”.

In this context, he considered irrefutably accredited the “state liability“, according “When the State undertakes to provide a service (in this case, that of justice), it must do so under adequate conditions to fulfill the objective for which it was created., being liable for damages caused by its failure to comply or improper performance,” the judge said in a citation of case law. At the same time, it affirmed that, in such circumstances, “-it-must-be-responded in a principal and direct way to the harmful consequences which are caused by its activity”.

Then he added: “to configure the lack of service by action or omission, there must be a breach by public bodies and officials of an express or implied legal obligation. In other words, if the state or its agents act in accordance with what is established by the legal system, it will avoid causing harm to people. (…) Moreover, this abstention, this omission to do or to execute something, must clash and oppose the legal mandate of action expressly pre-established (or implicitly included in the express) in the norm – constitutional, supranational, legal or regulatory and verifying that, if this conduct had been respected, the damage would not have occurred.

On the other hand, Judge Martínez highlighted the “Inter-American Human Rights Systemwhose standards of protection “inevitably condition” the action of a State, in particular with regard to “certain particularly vulnerable groups” such as persons deprived of their liberty. According to such parameters, he stated that “the The State has the obligation to eliminate all kinds of obstacles and to prevent situations which could lead, by action or omission, to the violation of human rights., in all areas of expertise. He is responsible for the duty to protect the dignity of people (public interest) and that is why greater diligence and special protection are required when dealing with vulnerable groups.

In this context, the judge granted the actor’s request and decided to compensate the psychological, physical and moral damages. for which he condemned the Province of Buenos Aires to “pay him the total sum of (…) $2,540,000, as compensation for the damage”.

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