Judge Claudia Santos, part of the tribunal that acquitted the accused in the SQM case, shared on Instagram the personal toll of the nearly three-year trial. The process, one of the longest since the penal reform, imposed significant costs on her health and family. A letter to the editor also criticizes the judiciary's role in the procedure's inefficiency.
The oral trial in the SQM case recently concluded with an acquittal verdict by a majority of two votes to one in Santiago's Third Oral Criminal Tribunal. This process, lasting nearly three years, is regarded as one of the longest since Chile's penal process reform. The Public Prosecutor's Office spent around 2 billion pesos on the litigation.
Magistrate Claudia Santos, part of the majority vote and tasked with drafting the sentence—a job that will extend up to 10 months—expressed her exhaustion on Instagram: “Por fiiiiiiiinnnnnn cumplido el paso 1. Muchísimas gracias a todos por su apoyo y mensajes llenos de cariño. Estos casi 3 años han sido terribles, con un costo altísimo para mi salud y para mi familia. Respiraré un momento para el arduo paso 2”. She accompanied the message with a photo of herself, emphasizing the needed break before proceeding.
In a letter published in La Tercera, Alejandro Leiva López, Professor of Criminal Law at Universidad Andrés Bello, argues that the prosecution's defeat is not solely their fault. He references the Criminal Procedure Code: Article 10 requires judges to ensure reasonable timelines; Article 247 allows warning the prosecutor to close the accusation or declare dismissal; and Article 276 empowers excluding irrelevant evidence in the intermediate stage. Leiva López concludes that the courts allowed a long and inefficient process, undermining the judicial system's credibility.
This case echoes prior incidents, such as Judge Leonel Torres, whose social media comments led to a trial's annulment by the Supreme Court.