Verdicts for sale

[NewsWhore]

Supreme Court judge Hugo Alvarez has revealed that 16 judges in Higuey have been dismissed for handing out sentences that favored drug dealers, and that the same thing has happened in Santiago in the case of eight or ten magistrates. According to the judge, there are still plenty of "benign" magistrates who sell their verdicts. According to the front-page story in today's Hoy, a lack of proper judicial procedures and acts of corruption have caused the Supreme Court to fire "dozens" of magistrates. Alvarez was one of the speakers at a seminar held at the National Forestry School in Jarabacoa. The seminar analyzed what has happened in the two years since the New Penal Code was introduced. Alvarez said that there were still too many lenient judges, even in cases where the accused was caught "red-handed." The Supreme Court justice did point out that, under the new system, far fewer people are held in preventative custody.

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