by Rod Hughes

UPDATE>–(See articles 1301, 1343 for background) The parents of murder victim Maureen Hidalgo, Vera Mora and Miguel Hidalgo, asked the courts Tuesday to grant them some $261,000 as indemnity in the equivalent of the wrongful death suit won by the Goldman family against O. J. Simpson. But in Costa Rican jurisprudence, a civil suit of this kind is most often conducted simultaneously with a criminal prosecution.

The plea for material and moral damages asked by the parents’ lawyer, Alfonso Ruiz, included a sum for the pain of Luis Fernando Burgos’s having said that his wife, Maureen, had been kidnapped. Ruiz emphasized the double blow to their hopes for her return being dashed when, a week after her diappearance, her body was found dumped in a rural area. When they were called to identify the body, it was so decomposed that they could not recognise her, said Ruiz.

As expected, prosecutor Christian Ulate asked the three-judge panel for a maximum sentence of six year prison for co-defenant Zulay Rojas for withholding evidence of Burgos’s alleged confession to her that he had murdered his wife. The young-looking former prosecutor, Rojas, wiped away her tears. She has maintained that Burgos is a violent man and that she feared for her life if she divulged his secret.

Ulate belittled the testimony of psychiatrist Gioconda Batres that Rojas suffered from postraumatic stress disorder after Burgos allegedly confessed his crime to her. He drew attention to the fact that Rojas is employed as a prosecutor in the same court system. “It’s clear,” said Ulate, “that if doña Zulay had denounced the crime (that Tuesday) as is required of her job as a prosecutor, that same day the police would have found evidence in the defendant’s own apartment.” Two years of the six Ulate is asking is on the charge of aiding someone to dispose of, hide or alter clues of a crime.

Henry Vega, a penal lawyer for Maureen’s parents, asked a 35 year prison sentence for Burgos, echoing the main prosecutor’s closing statement on Monday.Vega also asked for a two-year sentence for false reporting of a crime (for maintaining that his wife had been kidnapped) and, strangely, an additional three months of community service for illegal possession of two pistols.

The defense for Rojas opened its arguments yesterday.

by Rod Hughes

The Costa Rican Cycling Federation may be a trifle slow, does not fool around when it comes to doping. The board has suspended bicyle racer Juan Carlos Rojas for two years after he tested positive for using a prohibited substance in the Tour of El Salvador last April. Rojas was a member of the local Cogeas team.

Competitive cycling has been extremely vigilant about use of performance-enhancing drugs since a previously mediocre Tour of France competitor suddenly became a leader a few years ago, only to collapse and die during the race. The autopsy revealed he had taken a chemical to increase performance and had simply driven his body past all reasonable limits.

Rojas will be unable to race until Sept. 14, 2009. He did not appear to present a defense before the board last Friday when the decision was handed down.