by Rod Hughes

Prosecuting Attorney Miguel Abarca has a flair for the dramatic. His final summation in the murder trial of Luis Ferando Burgos, accused of murdering his wife, Maureen Hidalgo, (see newsfed 1301) opened with a slide show.

The first on the screen was a photo of an attractive, smiling Maureen. “This,” said Arbarca, “is the Maureen that Vera and Miguel (her parents) gave away when she married…” Then he clicked on the screen a photo of her body as the medical examiner saw it. “And this is what they got back in return.”

Although Abarca is not presenting the case before a jury but a three-judge panel, he needs all the persuasive skills he has, because physical evidence is thin on the ground. Although Maureen’s body was found a week after her disappearance, dumped in a rural area, it was so deteriorated that the autopsy was unable to establish with certainty the cause of death, although strangulation was the examiner’s first probable cause.

At the moment his wife’s body flashed on the screen, Burgos blinked rapidly, then turned his face away. It was at that moment that prosecutor Abarca called for the maximum penalty under Costa Rican law, 35 years in prison. (Costa Rica abolished the death penalty in the late 19th century and has no life imprisonment as such.)

The trial has been a battle of witnesses, the prosecution’s depicting Burgos as a violent, abusive man, the defense presenting testimony of a happy marriage between Burgos and Maureen. Burgos, testifying in his own behalf Sept. 7, said he had breakfast with Maureen, then kissed her goodbye as she left for work.

But Abarca said in his final argument that Burgos strangled her that fateful morning of July 11, 2006, but found that he could not handle her lifeless body by himself and engaged two accomplices to help him. The prosecution version was bolstered by two witnesses, Anthony Calderon and Guillermo Hutt. The prosecutor said that Burgos then “cynically and coldly” concocted the story about her being carjacked and kidnapped.

Ironically, one of the most damning of Abarca’s witnesses is a co-defendant, Zulay Rojas. She is Burgos’s ex-girlfriend who said that Burgos confessed to her that he had killed his wife but, although she is a former prosecutor in the court, she withheld the evidence from police for a time. She said Burgos is a violent man and that she was in fear for her life.

Today, another prosecutor, Christian Ulate, is expected to sum up the case against Rojas and ask for the maximum penalty, six years in prison, for withholding evidence of a violent crime. The defense for the co-defendants will present their summaries later in the week.

The case has riveted public attention much like the Lacey Peterson murder a few years ago in the United States. Almost everyone in the trial are officers of the court. Burgos is a former public defender, Rojas a prosecutor, the murder victim a legal assistant for the court.