He spent three years in prison for a crime and the Justice acquitted him: “You should not take responsibility on those who were not.”

Ignacio Damián Pedernera is 21 years old and spent the last three in prison. He was accused of being the perpetrator of the crime of taxi driver Mario Esusy (61), which occurred in 2019 in the city of Rosario. At the trial, the Prosecutor's Office requested that he be sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the court decided on Tuesday to acquit him for the benefit of the doubt.

In their resolution, in addition, judges Rodolfo Zvala, Nicolás Vico Gimena and Ismael Manfrín questioned the investigation by stating that, although the case remains unpunished, “those who were not responsible should not be charged.”

Esusy's homicide happened in the early morning of April 18, 2019 in an attempted robbery. Around 1.30, the victim was working with his taxi, waiting for a customer in Madrid and Casilda passage, when he was attacked with a shot from a motorcycle.

The bullet hit the chest of the taxi driver, who even then drove a few meters, crossed Formosa Street and hit a car that was parked. By the time they came to assist him, he had already passed away.

Pedernera was arrested two days later at his home, where he was kidnapped by a .22 caliber revolver. He was charged with homicide classified as a criminal cause aggravated by the use of firearms, robbery qualified by the use of firearms, attempted robbery and illegitimate carrying of a firearm of war, as co-author.

Prosecutor Patricio Saldutti developed a hypothesis: he said that the suspect had participated a few minutes before the attempted assault on two young men, who managed to enter his home before being approached by the alleged robbers, who shot at the door of the house with a 9-millimeter gun.

Five minutes later, in the same area, the taxi driver was reportedly approached with the intention of robbery and shot him, which is why he was murdered. On this basis, he requested life imprisonment for Pedernera for the crime of homicide criminis causa, that is, one committed to conceal another offense, in this case robbery.

However, witnesses to the first incident pointed out that the attackers' motorcycle was occupied by three people, while those responsible for the driver's crime said that it was a man who shot. These contradictions were compounded by others that emerged during the debate, with witnesses unable to describe in the same way the garments worn by the alleged aggressors.

On Tuesday, the president of the court Zvala questioned in his judgment the chain of custody of ballistic material provided by the Prosecutor's Office, which was “the only objective evidence” offered. He said, reading the ruling at the Rosario Criminal Justice Center, that “the culprit is still unpunished, but it is not for this reason that the authorship should not be charged on those who were not, or at least, on whom the evidence does not syndicate him.”

“The actors of the penal system must ensure strict compliance with their functional role, and in the present case expectations of conviction have been generated in the families of the victims and in society as a whole, without having had enough conviction to obtain a conviction, which unfortunately can undermine the credibility of the penal system”, the judge lamented.

In the ruling, the court also sentenced Pedernera to one year in prison and the payment of a fine of 1,000 pesos for illegal possession of a firearm, which he was kidnapped when he was arrested at his home. After the end of the trial, the young man was released.

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