“It’s a lifetime penalty.” This was announced by the prosecutor Verónica Ferrero after hearing that the Court of Hearing of Santa Rosa, in La Pampa, sentenced the mother of Lucio Dupuy (5) and his girlfriend to life imprisonment for having beaten him to death and for sexual abuse. The accusers had requested that the accessory of “indeterminate time” be added to the maximum sentence, but the magistrates did not allow it. In practice, the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office clarified, it is not a substantial change in the final sentence because due to the classification of the crime that was attributed to Magdalena Espósito Valenti (25) and Abigail Páez (28) “they will not be able” to access the conditional freedom. “She is literally perpetual,” said the lawyer for the minor’s paternal family.
“In paragraph 21, the Court that sentenced them expressly says: ‘The person sentenced to life imprisonment for aggravated homicide will never exhaust his compliance,'” the lawyer for Lucio’s father’s family, José Aguerrido, read at the beginning of the press conference. . “In other words (that is), literal perpetual life”, he stressed and clarified that, after the court read, the feeling was, at first, “of disgust” because they had not given rise to the request for the accessory of “indeterminate time” to life sentence, but after reading the resolution of the judges they were satisfied.
“Today, as is the Argentine legislation, the sentence is life, and understand that literally: no more come out,” said Aguerrido. “At first there was discontent but what my lawyer requested was modified,” said Ramón, Lucio’s grandfather. In this sense, the lawyer completed that “I left with a hint of restlessness, but later I took a reading and called Ramón to say: ‘Mission accomplished, perpetual is perpetual.'”
Esposito Valenti had been found guilty on February 2 for the crime of “triplely qualified homicide for cruelty, treachery and for the link.” While Páez was convicted of “murder by cruelty and treachery” and “seriously outrageous sexual abuse.” And yesterday, as the last instance of this trial, the court announced the amount of the penalty. Both defendants decided not to witness it, such as when it was revealed that they were found responsible for Lucio’s crime, which occurred in November 2021.
For her part, prosecutor Verónica Ferrero explained to the press after reading the sentence that “the prosecution and complaint had also requested the imposition of article 52, which is accessory for an indefinite period, but what they have to know is that this life imprisonment that the judges have just ordered is a sentence for life; They have no chance of being released.”
“There are crimes that are very serious, such as the one committed by the defendants, for which probation is not granted,” he specified and, in this sense, added: “Article 14 of the Penal Code establishes that people who are convicted of this crime cannot request, after 35 years, or any term, conditional release.”
On the other hand, both the complaint and the prosecutor’s office announced that they will appeal the decision to eliminate the abuse of Lucio’s mother from the sexual offense. The judges attributed it only to Páez. And the father of the victim will insist that it is a crime with the aggravating circumstance of “gender hatred”.
Currently, both women are housed in a San Luis prison and the baby’s paternal family will ask that they be separated when it is defined where they should serve their sentence.
The fact. “It is possible to affirm, with certainty that claiming a judicial sentence, that Lucio Dupuy was subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence for several months before his death,” the magistrates argued in their ruling released at the beginning of February. As reconstructed, the crime occurred on November 26, 2021. That night, Lucio was taken by Páez to the hospital where it was found that he had died. There he said that the boy had been left alone for a while and when he returned he found the house in a mess, the minor injured, and that he had been abused. It was all a lie. The autopsy specified that the fatal blows occurred between 18 and 19, when both women were in the house. Later, Espósito Valenti and Páez leave the property to go to work for the baby’s mother. After 9:00 p.m., Lucio’s mother’s partner returns home, and a security camera records when she leaves with the fainted baby in her arms.
The nurses and doctors who received Lucio confirmed that he was admitted lifeless and described a heartbreaking picture in the baby’s body. The autopsy report reveals injuries from old dates and from that same day. Multiple, brutal, wild, both visible and internal. Then the chats between them revealed the constant mistreatment and beatings to which they subjected the baby. Now his murderers received a life sentence.
The fate of the defendants
“For now they will stay where they are, and later the Federal Penitentiary System will decide if they will stay together or be separated. It is not a decision made by the prosecution or the judges.” This was explained by the prosecutor in the case regarding the claim, from the beginning, made by the paternal family of Lucio Dupuy that Magdalena Espósito Valenti and Abigail Páez were separated. Both are detained in San Luis Penitentiary Complex 1. They were taken there at the beginning of the case, after a demonstration with incidents took place at the 6th Police Station, where they had been housed after the sentence was known. It is not known where they will be housed or if the request of Lucio’s family will be heard. La Pampa does not have a provincial Penitentiary Service. It has a prison for women that belongs to the Federal Penitentiary Service, Unit 13. There are 36 women detained there with a sentence (two others are in the police station), according to the latest report of the National System of Statistics on the Execution of Sentences corresponding to 2021. And three of them, for homicide, like Espósito and Páez.
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