El testigo protegido en el contexto del crimen organizado Fases de protección e implicaciones procesales y afectación a la dignidad humana

Abstract

The protected witness is a procedural figure of an evidentiary nature that the police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office may have at their disposal when the circumstances of a case, within the context of organized crime, so require, especially when the possibilities of knowing the internal structure of the criminal group, as well as all its criminal activity, have no other option and the identification of the perpetrators and the collection of evidence is facilitated useful and relevant to the activity and structure of the organization.

From this perspective, the State must ensure the physical integrity and life of the protected witness and his or her closest family members, who could be exposed to the risk of death due to the witness’s collaboration. This investigation contemplates the various phases of witness protection and that, in view of a constitutional pronouncement of the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica, such protection should be maintained only until the intermediate stage of the process and not at the trial stage, which threatens the physical safety of the witness, coincidentally causing a total lack of motivation for those who wish to collaborate with the administration of justice.

The figure of the protected witness is analyzed from a procedural, jurisprudential, doctrinal and conventional normative point of view, in which it is related to the principle of human dignity and the principle of defense.