According to lawyer Inés Rojas, in Chile there is a record of 77 real cases where people have been deprived of liberty due to judicial errors.

During this Tuesday, April 23, the Regional Defender of Coquimbo and academic of the Oral Litigation Chair of the Law degree at the University of La Serena, Inés Rojas Varas, presented to the students of the subject about the “Innocent Project”, created in 2013 to provide a space for reparation and recognition to people who were unjustly deprived of liberty in our country.

“The importance of the 'Innocents Project' lies, mainly, in that people, communities and specifically students, who will be future lawyers, can be attentive to the way in which the criminal process is carried out, which is The rights of the people are always safeguarded and protected and that each of the participants in the criminal process and its participants - the Prosecutor's Office, the Public Ministry and the Defense - carry out the necessary actions so that the process complies with all the guarantees established by international treaties and also, by our laws, so that finally the sentence that emanates from this criminal process is a fair sentence,” said Rojas.

The development of this exhibition was closely followed by the students, who were able to learn about real cases in which people were unjustly deprived of their liberty. In relation to this, Nicolás Figueroa, a fifth-year law student, indicated that “personally, the academic's presentation was excellent. His clarity of expression, typical of an authority in his area, only motivates us all to perform well as future lawyers. Personally, I believe that this is where the importance of activities like these lies, because it is not simply material information, but rather it is the experience of real cases and a project that is related to the freedom of people and the causes of why they were “illegitimately deprived of liberty.”

Finally, the lawyer and academic highlighted the importance of educating people about what the criminal process is, who are the participants in it and mainly the role of the Public Criminal Defender's Office, which, she stated, is sometimes not very well understood because its mission is not specifically known. For this reason, he pointed out, this information regarding the “Innocent Project”, where there is a record of 77 real cases where people have been deprived of liberty due to judicial errors, and that their innocence has subsequently been established, cannot occur in any judicial system. .