“I feel enormous happiness because they finally realized that I am innocent and that they were all lies (what the prosecutor said) and I will be able to be with my children again”, he said this Friday to Page 12 Anna, come in tears, emotional, after looking for her belongings at the Goya Women’s police station, where she was detained for the last few days, while the oral debate that ended with her acquittal was carried out. It had been an hour and a while since the Trial Court of that city of Corrientes had given her her verdict: she declared her innocent by majority vote: two judges against one. The 30-year-old woman and mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy, had been imprisoned since November in the town of Esquina, and came to trial accused of doubly qualified homicide due to the link and treachery, after suffering an obstetric emergency and give birth to a dead child at home.
“I was very afraid because they are professionals and I thought they were not going to believe me,” Ana told this newspaper, very moved.
After hearing the arguments, the president of the court, Judge Ricardo Diego Carbajal, explained in fourteen minutes and in simple words the foundations of the ruling: he destroyed one by one the statements of prosecutor Javier Gustavo Mosquera on which he based his accusation.
The magistrate pointed out that Mosquera never showed scientific evidence that the child was born alive, or what was the cause of his death, or where or how the alleged murder could have been committed; not even, he pointed out, did he order a DNA test to be able to corroborate that they actually had a filial relationship with Ana. The accusation, it became clear, was based on flimsy, incongruous evidence, which sought to turn an obstetric event into a crime. In addition, he stressed that the prosecutor always directed his investigation against Ana, when in any case he could have investigated other people who live in the same place as her – in whose patio the buried fetus was found – since there are “several boxes” from other family members. In other words, he exposed the cruelty, without evidence, that the prosecutor had against the poor woman.
Ana sold homemade food to earn a living. Her mother, 50 years old, is a domestic worker, her father, 57, an employee. Ana is the second of six siblings, the youngest being 13 years old. They all live together, in the same house, in the town of Esquina in Corrientes.
The decision to declare Ana innocent was made by judges Carbajal and Jorge Antonio Carbone. The third magistrate of the court, Julio Ángel Duarte, dissented. The foundations of the sentence will be known next Friday at 13.
On the purple wall, behind the dais where the three judges sat, a crucifix could be seen; to the side, the Argentine flag.
When Judge Carbajal said the word “innocent,” the courtroom erupted in applause. In the audience were feminist activists who accompanied Ana’s wife and relatives during the judicial process. The young woman covered her face and cried, drowning in her own tears. Her dad and her mom hugged. “Come on, let’s get Ana out!”, celebrated members of different groups, with the green scarf, symbol of the Campaign for the Right to Abortion. Dozens of women were waiting outside the court, among them, members of the association “Free we want them.”
After reading the verdict, the judges ordered Ana’s immediate release. The woman had been imprisoned since November 10 in a police station in Esquina. “My legs are still shaking,” said Ana’s defense attorney, Natalia Avalos, upon leaving the court.
Already released, in the street, Ana, very moved, hugging her father, and amid applause, thanked the national media that covered the case, the former national deputy for Corrientes Araceli Ferreyra, who was also present, her lawyer, Natalia Avalos, and all the people who supported her. “Fighting makes sense and in a feminist key much more. We twisted the wind and the fate of condemnation for women and poor, “said Ferreyra to this newspaper.
The trial began on Monday. For four days, 22 witnesses were summoned. Key to the acquittal was the statement by the gynecologist Stella Maris Manzano –quoted by Judge Carbajal when reporting on the verdict–, which revealed –with technical and precise data– the lack of scientific evidence to support that the child had been born alive and had been later killed.
“I don’t know why they kept me imprisoned all these months. They didn’t even give me the address, “said Ana, to this newspaper, accompanied by her lawyer. She was wearing a green Campaign scarf around her neck that members of the Campaign had just given her after they had removed her belongings from the Goya Women’s Police Station.
Another fact that drew attention and pointed out to this newspaper by the doctor Manzano is that when Ana was arrested, on November 10, she spent four days without being appointed a defense attorney; On the other hand, the Corrientes justice did immediately appoint a legal representative of the dead creature.
Who will repair Ana for the eight months that she was deprived of her freedom in a dungeon with an unfounded, unjust, arbitrary, rigged accusation? Justice cannot continue to see criminals where there are poor women, who face obstetric emergencies, in contexts of extreme vulnerability.