Wilson Camacho maintained that the prosecution trusts that justice will be served in the Jet Set Case and considered the demand for a new expert analysis irrelevant in a case where the causes of the collapse are clearly established
SANTO DOMINGO- Judge Raymundo Mejía, of the First Court of Instruction of the National District, has set June 15th at 10:00 a.m. for the hearing where he will decide whether the implicated parties Maribel and Antonio Espaillat will go to trial for their involvement in the collapse of the Jet Set nightclub, an event that occurred on April 8th of last year and which left 236 people dead and around 200 injured.
For his part, after this decision was announced, Deputy Attorney General Wilson Camacho, head of the General Directorate of Prosecution of the Public Ministry, stated last Friday night that siblings Antonio and Maribel Espaillat should be sent to trial. Answering questions from the press after the preliminary hearing, he said that during the process the Public Ministry makes every effort to ensure justice is served.
“He did so from the very beginning, gathering and preserving the evidence that allowed for an investigation. We then appointed a commission of experts, including an international expert, to determine the reason for the collapse of the Jet Set nightclub,” he said.
"And that reason is clearly established, that the collapse was due to the excess weight that the nightclub's managers placed on the roof," he added.
“That is a matter that is clearly established in the expert report. And today, even in court, we demanded that the court listen to each and every one of the victims who have the right to be heard, since this is an element, in fact, inherent to reparation,” he stated.
The ruling will be on June 15th
Judge Raymundo Mejía, who is handling the case, explained that he is reserving the ruling after hearing Maribel Espaillat's defense arguments, as well as the responses and counter-responses from the Public Prosecutor's Office, the defendants' legal counsel, the plaintiffs, and representatives of the victims.
He pointed out that the Criminal Procedure Code establishes a period of between 30 and 45 days to issue this type of decision.
An "impertinent" counter-expertise
Regarding questions about the expert report submitted by the defense, he stated, “We have already established this in court, and we reiterate it here: there is no reason, no need for a defense expert report. First, because the causes of the Jet Set collapse are clearly established; second, because the defense itself accepted the facts presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the evidence presented by the Public Prosecutor's Office, including the expert report,” he added, concluding: “Therefore, another expert report is, quite simply, irrelevant.”.
Regarding the legal classification, he explained that it is now up to the court to decide which legal classification to use when sending the case to trial. “The discussion of this issue is a very technical matter, and in my personal opinion, there is some confusion, especially regarding the element of knowledge. Knowing the possible consequences is an element inherent to dolus eventualis (reckless intent) and is also an element inherent to culpa conciente (conscious negligence),” he elaborated.
In that same order, Camacho said that “both elements share the issue of knowledge; the case is not resolved there, it is resolved in the representation of the damage, and that representation of the damage, as established by the Public Prosecutor, which is a conclusion reached according to the evidence, is a classification of conscious fault as established by the Public Prosecutor.”.
“We hope that the court will send this case to trial on this basis,” he said.
During the hearing, the prosecution was represented by Camacho and prosecutors Rosa Ysabel Mejía, Emmanuel Ramírez, and Miguel Collado, assigned to the Prosecution Directorate. Magalis Sánchez, assigned to the National District Prosecutor's Office, was also present.
What the Public Prosecutor's file says
The file indicates that the defendants aggravated their responsibility by overloading the roof structure of the premises with large volume air conditioning equipment and water tanks, without carrying out technical studies that guaranteed the resistance of the structure.
Furthermore, they ignored internal warnings about the deteriorating roof, prioritizing saving resources despite the obvious risks.
In the process, the prosecutors provided the findings that, when analyzing the structure of the building, were documented by the experts Leonardo de Jesús Reyes Madera (seismic-resistant engineer), Eduardo A. Fierro (president of BFP Engineers) and Máximo José Corominas Quezada (pathological engineer), appointed by the Public Ministry to determine the causes of the collapse of the nightclub.
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