This Thursday, by order of the President Gabriel Boric, the Minister of Justice, Marcela Rios, gave way to the first pardon for humanitarian reasons delivered by the new government.
Is about Byron Soto Rojas, 22 years old, who had served -since July 12, 2019- almost three of the 10 years in prison to which he was sentenced for robbery in a place intended for the room.
The decree, according to sources of Justice, was signed this Thursday morning by Minister Ríos, after analyzing the information provided by the Prison Conduct Court, which indicated that Soto Rojas effectively qualified to be granted a pardon.
The request for Soto Rojas to be released had been submitted by the Criminal Defense Office on December 24 of last year to the Gendarmerie in Valdivia – the city where he was serving a sentence – during the Sebastián Piñera administration. The request was due to a advanced stage 3 testicular cancer with brain and lung metastases and an acute anemia, diagnosis that was delivered on December 14 last and that kept the young man hospitalized in the Valdivia Hospital.
On January 18, he had been transferred again to the Llancahue prison, where he remained in the Health Area of the Valdivia Penitentiary Complex until last Sunday, the day he was urgently referred to the Neurosurgery area of the hospital.
According to article 6 of Law 18,050, The presidential benefit for humanitarian reasons can be granted by the Head of State “in qualified cases and by means of a well-founded supreme decree”, as long as the beneficiary “is sentenced by an enforceable sentence and does not involve terrorist conduct, qualified as such by a law enacted in accordance with article 9 of the Political Constitution of the State”.
Although Soto Rojas has not served two thirds of the sentence established in the same law, equally, according to the same regulations, this requirement can be waived in qualified cases, such as -for example- a serious state of health.