Chief justice rejects life sentences

[NewsWhore]

Supreme Court chief justice, Jorge Subero Isa, has rejected a call made by the Chief of Police for life sentences to be added to the list of sentencing guidelines available to magistrates under the Code of Penal Procedures now under review in the legislature. Subero Isa told reporters from Listin Diario that life sentences were not needed, and that, instead, judges needed to be stricter when issuing sentences, since life sentences would not reduce crime. Earlier this week the police chief, Major General Rafael Guillermo Guzman Fermin, argued for life sentences as a way of separating inveterate criminals and psychopaths from society. The Chief Justice said that in the Dominican Republic "we are very timid, first in complying with the law, and second, the judges in applying the law." The current legislative initiative contemplates life sentences for murder, parricide or rape. Maximum sentences for homicides would be increased up to 65 years from the current 30-year sentence.

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