Global Courant
The posters changed. Julieta Riera’s face (24) was in the center. They left, for a while, the requests for justice, the claims asking for life imprisonment. It is that Jorge Julián Christe (31), her then partner, had received the maximum sentence, convicted of femicide.
Last week, after a call from her lawyer, Ana Brugo (54), she learned that, due to a decision of the Supreme Court of Justice (STJ) of the province of Entre Ríos, the claim for justice had not ended and that, despite to the surprise, neither did their fight.
“It’s reliving everything again, starting over: we expected anything but this, annulling the trial? Never”, says Julieta’s mother with regret.
Femicide of Julieta Riera in Entre Ríos: the victim’s glasses made it possible to determine that the murderer had hit her in the right eye.
It is that after an appeal and the double agreement of the Chamber of Cassation of the province, the STJ decided to invalidate the trial and order a new one.
By admitting the extraordinary appeal, judges Claudia Mizawak, Daniel Carubia and Miguel Ángel Giorgio ordered the debate to be annulled.
The decision, reached by majority with the votes of Mizawak and Carubia, established that “there were serious effects on the right to defense” and “vices” in the process.
Among them, the “incorporation in the trial of important evidence (photographic records) that could not be controlled by the defense” and “the fact that the defense power to cross-examine witnesses, through technical consultants, was prevented.”
Julieta Riera was 24 years old and was the victim of a femicide on April 30, 2020 in Paraná.
In addition, they went against the first instance judge and questioned “the final instructions to the popular jury” considering them “confusing and imprecise.”
It was a popular jury with 12 members that unanimously found Julián Christe guilty.
The fact
On April 30, 2020, Julieta Riera died after falling from the 8th floor of the Insurance Institute, in downtown Paraná. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the young woman’s family considered that it was a femicide, while the defense of her ex-partner maintained that her death was accidental.
Christe is the son of former Civil and Commercial judge Ana María Stagnaro and has been detained since the time of the crime.
Although the young man tried to support the version of suicide or the accident, the investigation concluded that the girl had died as a result of previous injuries, consistent with gender violence, and that she was unconscious at the time of the fall as a result of mechanical suffocation.
The context of violence in which Julieta was found was proven in the trial. She even sent a photo to Christe’s mother asking for her help showing her blows, her marks on her face. She did not tell her own family what she was going through, but they insisted on helping her when they noticed that every time she was “isolating herself more”, that she did not have a cell phone and that she could see them in brief moments and without ringing the doorbell of the house she lived in. shared with his partner.
Julian Christe is in custody.
Julieta had a son who is now 6 years old and with whom she had also lost ties. In addition, on her body there were traces of “old blows” that proved that she had been subjected to violence for months.
The surprise
Mariana Riera is Julieta’s sister and told Clarín: “It seemed to us a very fair trial. It does not seem to us that the jury was contaminated or that the judge was not impartial. He maintained his position, listened to both parties, it seemed to us a very fair judge. For this reason, we expected anything, that they would reduce his sentence or that they would try anything but this, not this. It was a bucket of ice water that they threw at us”.
This Monday, the prosecutor of the Ignacio Aramberry case and the prosecutor Patricia Yedro will meet with the representative of the Riera family, Corina Beisel, and with Julieta’s mother, Ana Brugo, to decide if they will present an appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation to review this decision of the provincial Justice.
As confirmed to this newspaper by Corina Beisel, the lawyer for the Riera family, first “there are ten business days to appeal to the Court” and, in the event that they decide not to file the appeal, “the term to present the complaint is five plus business days.”
The San Martín pedestrian street at 900, where the building where María Julieta Riera (24) died. She fell from an eighth floor.
“When the trial ended, I wanted to approach him and tell him: ready, we already proved that she was murdered, that they killed my daughter, now give her back to me. And that is not possible. I have to continue for my other children, for my grandchildren , but my daughter is not returned to me anymore and thinking about having to go through all this again, it is heartbreaking, “says Ana.
“We are going to suffer the lack of Juli all our lives. Now we have to join forces again and go out to fight for justice for my sister, because it is the only thing we have left,” agrees Mariana. And she says: “We had a poster, a very large banner that a friend of my husband made us. Some time ago we cut off the piece in which we asked for ‘justice’, to keep it, to preserve the boys as well. But now it is feeling that we have to walk the path again, fight again”.
EMJ