By The Star Staff
Justice Secretary Domingo Emanuelli Hernández said Thursday of the release through the writ of habeas corpus of Delwin “Tun Tun” Berríos Navarro, the alleged leader of a criminal organization in Yabucoa, Humacao and San Lorenzo, that “if six months pass and the trial has not been held,” then it is the right of the accused person to be released to home incarceration.
“That is why the Prosecutor’s Office is working, so that the trials can be heard as soon as possible,” Emanuelli Hernández said in response to questions from the press.
Lead prosecutor Jessika Ivelisse Correa González insisted meanwhile that the Puerto Rico Constitution allows defendants like Berríos Navarro to take steps to be let out of prison and remain under supervised release.
“Every defendant at the state level has the right to bail,” she said. “The prosecutor’s office is prepared to see his case, but there are constitutional guarantees that we have to guarantee and that all of you and we have. In the case of ‘Tun Tun’ there were circumstances and rights that this citizen is invoking, but we are prepared to see the cases.”
“Berríos Navarró changed his legal representation several times, which caused the process against him to be delayed, due to, among other things, changing his lawyer several times,” Correa González said.
When asked if there are guarantees that the subject will not commit a crime again while he is under electronic supervision, the prosecutor said “there are security measures that were taken; if he commits any violence, the Prosecutor’s Office is prepared to request that he be admitted [to prison] again.”
“If he goes missing or the shackle [electronic ankle bracelet] is cut, the case is processed and we will process him,” Correa González added.
Berríos Navarro was captured in September of last year in San Lorenzo by agents from the Humacao Criminal Intelligence Division and the Federal Marshals Service. As more than six months had passed without the judicial process beginning, Humacao Court Judge Martín Ramos Junquera accepted the request for release.