by Rod Hughes
San Jose—The prosecution has rested its case and now it is the defense team’s turn in the murder trial of Luis Fernando Burgos, a case that has many of the elements that riveted public attention in the Scott Peterson trial in California. It involves a missing wife whose body is later found in suspicious circumstances.
Two elements are different. Although the media is attentive, it is not the feeding frenzy of U.S. coverage. (Costa Rica does not have CNN’s Nancy Grace to flog it to death.)
The second element is that the Peterson trial did not bend the image of the very court system that is hearing the trial. The string of prosecution witnesses included lovers, spouses and ex-lovers until the judicial branch of government seems to have the intricate office relationsnips of the legal beagles in the TV series Ally McBeal. Burgos is a public defense attorney, his wife a legal assistant also employed by the judiciary.
One element is the same. The prosecution is hampered by a lack of direct forensic evidence, a point on which the defense has pounded during cross examination. Burgos’ wife, Maureen Hidalgo, was last seen alive as she came home from work by a security cop in the a apartment complex in which she and her husband lived. That was July 11, 2006, but it was not until two days later that Burgos reported his wife missing.
It was not until another five days had passed that Hidalgo’s body was found dumped in a rural area, half covered with a black plastic garbage bag. (As if to add a note of melodrama, the date was Burgos and Hidalgo’s first wedding anniversary.) By then the tropical climate had left the body so decomposed that the coroner could not positively determine the cause of death. Forensic pathologist Alvaro Garcia could only say that strangulation was at the top of his list of probable causes.
However, no physical evidence of foul play was found in Burgos’s car or in the apartment.Toxicologist Guillermo Brenes testified to finding traces of the powerful seditive diazepan in Hidalgo’s body, which the prosecution uses to explain the apparent lack of resistance signs. Burgos’s doctor testified that he had prescribed the medicine to the public defender but the couple’s Nicaraguan maid, Dalila Alvarez, testified Burgos made his wife take pills that made her sleepy.
But testimony as to Burgos being an abusive husband was abundant, including Hidalgo’s ex-boyfirend (also a public defender) to whom she allegedly complained about her husband’s violence. The prosecution hypothesizes that his motive was jealousy. The defense was quick to point out that an abusive husband is not necessarily a murderous one.
The prosecution’s case, then, hinges on testimony, even from the first. Two hours after Burgos reported his wife missing, Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall’Anese received an anonymous call (later, it turned out it was from Judge Elizabeth Tossi) that Burgos allegedly asked a former client to help him move his wife’s body.
Perhaps the most damning testimony comes from Burgos’s ex-girlfriend and former public prosecutor Zulay Rojas who testified that Burgos came to her apartment and confessed the murder to her. Ironically she is a co-defendant for having withheld this information in a murder investigation and she faces up to six years in jail. She claims she was too afraid of Burgos to talk earlier.
Two men have testified that they allegedly came to the Burgos-Hidalgo apartment and helped Burgos move the body for disposal.
Defense attorney Jorge Rojas has already begun calling witnesses and the trial that has gone on for two months still may be another month away from final summations. The first of the defense witnesses this week portrayed Burgos as in love with his wife and one described him as breaking into tears when his wife’s body was found.
Instead of the jury in Anglo-Saxon common law, the case is being tried in front of a three-judge panel.