Just 5% of the complaints filed in 2011 before the courts of Costa Rica came to trial, said officials.
According to the Judiciary in 2011 a total of 221,069 complaints (5139 per 100,000 population), of which 10,997 (5%) went to trial and 7074 (3.2%) of the complaints actually reached sentence.
The director of the Lawyers Collective Security Jurisis, Juan Diego Castro, said these data in a press conference where he presented the fourth installment of a report that collects data on the Judiciary.
“The criminal justice remains stagnant,” said Juan Diego Castro the director of the Lawyers Collective Security Jurisis, who attributed the situation to “legal mess” that he says has led to the Criminal Procedure Code which came into force 15 years ago and has caused “slow and expensive process.”
By obtaining an average of the last 14 years, the percentage of cases without conviction came to 97.1%, said Castro.
The lawyer acknowledged that the country’s judicial process is slow and difficult.
The highest conviction rate was homicide with 393 complaints, of which 278 (70.7%) went to trial that same year and 213 people were convicted.
Drug trafficking crimes, robbery and rape cases reported a conviction percentage was 2.8%, 7.6%, and 18.7%, respectively.
The country’s politicians have refused to promote reforms to the Code of Criminal Procedure in order to expedite the judicial process.
The public has demanded better procedural process and management in recent months and hope that these issues become a topic of interest in the upcoming presidential elections.
The Costa Rica news (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
